SKM Development: Great Generals Study Logistics

I’ve tried in several places to make a difference between the Patrol forces and the Army forces. Patrol is essentially the old ‘garrison’ force of ACKs, they exist principally to provide for the stability of the realm. They get paid in a gold piece upkeep cost (as we indicated last time) and are basically a kingdom’s ‘standing army.’ These are the career military guys, or trained mercenaries, hired thugs, town guards, and so on.

The Army is a force that gets raised, and generally should be raised uncommonly. As we previously established, you can raise a military force of men equivalent to the number of families you have without problem, and can double that number while incurring some issues for production.

We also decided that the army and patrol forces, have different upkeep requirements. I’ve decided to toss that though.

Instead, I decided to find a way to represent the necessity of a supply line. An army on the march is hungry, and a military force requires an upkeep when it leaves the environs immediately surrounding the realm’s hexes. When it’s within those hexes, it’s assumed the soldiers can grab food at local bars, at their family farms and so on.

The supply train allows for the main home hexes to provide for the army, but only out to a number of hexes equal to the leader’s Ministry score. The train can be modified on each of the five ‘turns’ for military movement in a month. Beyond that, the force has to start relying on plunder or commandeer actions to provide for their monthly upkeep.  

When deploying a force outside of the controlled hexes , the ruler must indicate which hexes the supply line is projected through, but can only path it through a number of hexes equivalent to their Ministry score.

We’ll refer to the upkeep costs required once they are beyond their supply train as the ‘campaign upkeep.’ The supply train can also be interrupted if an enemy force lands uncontested on a hex the supply train passes through, in which case the supply line is considered “cut” and the military force will requires ‘campaign upkeep’ if the train isn’t restored by the end of the month.  

As far as specific campaign upkeep costs go, it represents both the requirement to keep the soldier fed, as well as their desire for more ‘booty’ as the risks of being far from their civilization sets in.

Peasants:

.5 Subsistence, .5 Resource.

Light Infantry:

1 Subsistence, 1 Resource

Heavy Infantry:   

2 Subsistence, 2 Resource

Cavalry

5 Subsistence, 2 Resource

Archers

1 Subsistence, 1 Resource

Horse Archers:

5 Subsistence, 2 Resource

Knights

8 Subsistence, 10 Resource

They still have to get paid as well.

Failure to meet these requirements results in the units becoming increasingly demoralized, and if the subsistence requirement is not met for 2 months, the units will begin to disband as they either desert or die of starvation.  Knights will typically insist their Resource requirement on Campaign Upkeep be filled preferentially to other units.

Cavalry and Horse Archers can be cannibalized (representing eating their horses) to produce 1 Subsistence per unit so cannibalized, but it transforms them into the equivalent of light infantry and archers respectively, and immediately demoralizes them. Expending their equipping cost in Resource will restore them to their prior status.  

A unit interrupting another units supply line, gains the resources that would be supplied equivalent to 50% of the subsistence requirement of what would otherwise be the force’s campaign upkeep.

What this means is that if a force interrupted the supply line heading to a unit containing 100 light infantry, 50 heavy infantry and a knight, the force so interrupting would gain 104 subsistence (which is still subject to monthly spoilage), but preying on another enemy’s supply line might be a way to stave off your own subsistence woes.  

Tied in with this fun is movement.

Heavy Infantry requires two movement actions to move one hex.

Light Infantry, and Peasants can each move 1 hex per movement action.

Cavalry, Horse Archers and Knights can move 2 per movement action.

You may remember that a force moves equivalent to its slowest unit. Keep that in mind if you’re bringing heavy infantry.  

SKM Development: Waging War

Combat between units. Now we’re getting into more gritty mechanical stuff. And this is really where my lack of skill comes to the forefront.

Firstly, we decided that everything happens on a month by month basis. However, having only one action to declare in a month is kind of well, sucky, so let’s decide that each month contains five combat ‘turns.’

On a turn, a unit can either battle, move, restructure, engage in combat, defend against engagement, scout, retreat, be routed, be mustered, sack or conquer.

Battle is an involuntary action, if two opposing units share a hex on one of the five action count downs, they will battle.

Movement is the movement of your force. An army moves as fast as its slowest unit.

If two belligerent units stumble into one another, say by blind movement, this results in both forces fighting at disadvantage.

Restructure means that you can choose to adapt your force’s composition, say by breaking all your cavalry off, or by merging together separate groups of peasants and the like. Units can only be restructured together when in the same hex.

If attacked while restructuring, you can choose to immediately reintegrate the units together, or have a free movement of one unit while the other stays behind to fight.

Engage in Combat / Defend Against Engagement is when two belligerent forces encounter one another. Engaging is when you launch an attack. Defend Against Engagement is when you prepare to receive an attack. Defending requires two consecutive actions be declared as ‘Defend.

Engaging a hex that has no unit it in, puts you at disadvantage for the rest of the month.

Engaging more than once per month, except against a routing enemy, puts your force at disadvantage. Unless, your military unit is entirely cavalry and/or knights, in which case you can engage twice.  

Defending grants you an advantage. 

Engaging a force that has chosen to defend puts you at disadvantage (they’re still at advantage for defending).

Scout gives you details on one of the hexes surrounding your force (from a military perspective). Armies with at least five hundred infantry or one hundred cavalry are immediately detected by units in adjacent hexes, although scouting is still required to get specifics on number and composition.

If you choose to scout on the same turn that a unit in the hex you are scouting launches an attack, they are put at disadvantage.

Routed is involuntary movement imposed on you when your force breaks and falls into a disorganized retreat. The force falls back a number of squares equal to twice its movement away from its enemy, typically towards its own territory. If the force had individual units within it that had a better movement (such as cavalry), they break away and form separate routing forces. You are unguarded while routed.

Routed units who encounter non-routed units can be restructured so long as they are within a hex adjacent to the non-routed unit. If they are not restructured, they continue fleeing even if they pass directly through an allied unit.

Mustered is the act of raising the military unit.

Attacking a unit that is mustering or which mustered on a preceding action, puts them at disadvantage and grants advantage to the attacker.

Patrol forces are always considered to be raised. In the event of bandit plunder attacks, they are considered to be present for immediate specific deployment from any  hex possessing a stronghold.

Sacking involves one of two options. One is Plundering, and one is Commandeering. A hex being sacked does not contribute its resource or tax to its regular owner. Sacking puts your force into an ‘unguarded’ state as they are spread out looting, threatening farmers or running around terrorizing peasants. You cannot sack a hex that has an undefeated stronghold in it.

Commandeering means that the enemy unit within the hex forces the populace to essentially pay the unit’s monthly upkeep. They take the necessary subsistence or resource requirement from the hex itself. A hex forced into a ‘cannot feed its own people’ state by this doesn’t destabilize immediately though, as they know that they’re being robbed and not mismanaged, but if they suffer for too long they may destabilize.  

Plundering means the military force is robbing the people. Bandit and raider events are always considered to be ‘plundering.’ A plundering force takes twice the regular generated subsistence, resource and tax value from the hex at the cost of 2d10% of the population being lost (they are either driven off, or killed). If a hex is plundered for six turns consecutively, it is depopulated. Bandit events will never occur to the same hex on six consecutive turns, as this would depopulate a hex, and they view the populace as a resource to be cultivated.

Conquering entails that the unit leaves behind sufficient forces with a DR to ‘protect’ the hex, for purposes of claiming it and establishing control. This results in a hex becoming ‘contested’ between two belligerents. The one who actually provides for the hex’s security requirement is considered to be its owner for purposes of family assignments and income. Two opposing forces’ DRs are considered to cancel each other out (IE: A hex has 200 families, so a DR requirement of 20. Army A has a DR of 40. Army B has a DR of 51. This means Army B is supplying 11 DR to the hex, but that’s insufficient to control it.)  Contested hexes must have forces dedicated to their defense, and these units cannot be used to represent security elsewhere in a realm.

Also, to defend against conquest or conquer a hex, a force must be in a hex. If opposing forces are both in a hex, they resolve their DR for control after their battle.

Now, this is where I am a mild jerk water because these actions have to be decided essentially simultaneously. So two opposed players would need to be doing these actions at roughly the same time. They are however, done sight unseen, like playing Battleship.

Now, Spook, you ask, what is advantage and disadvantage? And for that, I answer.. it’s one of those modifiers to combat.

Advantage to attack increases your AR by ½.

Disadvantage to attack decreases your AR by a third.

Advantage to defense doubles your DR.

Disadvantage to Defense halves your DR.  

Being Unguarded cuts your AR and DR to one quarter of its usual value, rounded down.

Let’s take a closer look at this in a bit, since I want to unpack it more in my brain.

SKM Development: The Cost of Men

Alright, military stuff again. Because this stuff has an application for the economics of the realm.

One of the issues that the ACKs system had, was that losses were instantly re-absorbed because the hiring cost for a unit was identical to the cost of upkeep. This was simple for book keeping, but made losing men to misadventure something almost inconsequential. A dead light infantryman was replaced immediately by another light infantry man.

Looking at the requirement for upkeep and purchasing for troops, I concluded that we needed a few things taken care of first. One, precisely how we dealt with military operations (casualties specifically), and how much a trooper should cost at the on-set.

Well, the last part first, I decided for a simple first shot. A soldier’s initial purchase cost is equivalent to six months of pay up front. This represents the expenditure in equipment and resources for the guy.  This differs on the peasant. Their upkeep is 0.5 gp/mo, and their purchase cost is 1gp. So, with that simple calculation we get..

HIRING COST:

Peasants: 1 gp

Light Infantry: 12gp

Heavy Infantry: 30gp

Cavalry: 48gp

Knight: 120gp

Archer: 18gp

Horse Archers: 36gp

As I said quite some time ago though, Resource again shows its usefulness here. Not every can be bought with resource. The leather armor of a standard light infantryman, or the farm implements of a peasant are too small and fiddly. Its for stuff like heavy armor, horses, and so on, so..

RESOURCE HIRING COSTS:

Heavy Infantry: 3 Resource

Cavalry: 5 Resource

Knight: 10 Resource

Horse Archer: 5 Resource.

 So in lieu of spending 120gp for a knight, you can spend 10 resource to equip them. You still have to pay their upkeep however.

These hiring, or better put equipping costs, are the same for when you raise the army to train them. On the upside, you don’t need to upkeep trained soldiers, just “buy” them. The exception being the Knight. Knights always stick around. You can’t “lower” Knights or disband them once you’ve created them. The unit itself won’t stand for it.

Ok, that’s basic prices aside, now onto the issue of warfare itself.. That’s going to need a post all on its own..