How big is Cerilia in miles?

Dungeons & Dragons The Royal Library
1

Edit: Work in progress, I didn’t take out the coastal area’s … see my other post in this thread for explanation.
Edit: #2 – I went back and checked for version of map I used: Drakkon’s 2.12.2006 v1

I was up late & my ADHD is kicking in again while crunching numbers for the Web Play project. So I took a detour & was exploring map of Cerilia they have in PDF forms for giggles. This is quick so give or take 75 miles for each direction.

It occurred to me that, if the key scale is correct & using a ruler:

17 lengths x 75 miles east to west is 1275 miles across
11 lengths x 75 miles north to south is 825 miles across

1,051,875 miles squared is the size of Birthright’s world. 3,930,000 square miles is Europe by way of comparison.

From this we can take the number of provinces (847 minus up 30 for off shore) & then find the average size in squared miles of each province :slight_smile:

Which turns out to be ~1243miles squared or ~35 miles north to south & 35 west to east. This of course is an average. There’s bigger & smaller. Also you should note that 1275 divided by 25 miles per day (an armies speed) for 17 months to cross continent is done “…as a crow flies…” & not following roads if they are even available.

2

So theoretically an army could move from one province to another in 2 days? That sounds a little quick.

Sorontar

3

No army will move 25 miles a day, 10-12 would be good and that if it has roads to follow.

Add in the need to forage, stop to negotiate & trade for food etc and the speed reduces further.

A few armies went faster, but not many. Frankly an individual will have to be pretty healthy to consistently make 25 miles a day, an army which takes several hours just to get up and form into marching order will go much much slower.

Standard BR suggests 20-30 miles across a province, a number of people have suggested doubling this. It depends how big you want the continent to be really.

4

Even up to the 20th century army movement was pretty low: Napoleon’s armies were considered extremely fast for their time and their speed varied from 10 to 15 miles a day (the original Grande Armée did about 15, the Grande Armée that invaded Russia, more or less 9-10; the Italian campaign is his record, though, almost 18 miles iirc, but that was the young idealistic general Bonaparte; these generals need good roads, and even then will trigger a “oh, shit” moment in the opposition when they realize where he is). The further back in time the slower you get: for the middle ages until the early modern period (partially poor logistics, partially poor discipline and partially the heavy artillery before the Gribeauval and Liechtenstein systems was really ridiculously heavy and slow (and even then it would remain so for the Russians up to the french revolution, the Ottomans until about 1808, and almost a generation more for Persia)), you’d be lucky to march 5-6 miles a day with an army: it’s not just making one person walk, it’s organizing logistics and movement for a few thousand people. Although tbh, I could see detachments of a single warcard in size having bonus movement speed but how often do people send only a fraction of their army unless for scouting. Also, poor roads would slow it down and since a lot of the medieval networks were basically whatever was left of roman roads, yeah, maybe even more like 3-4.

Also, depending on what you want: using a province size of about 50 miles across on average gives a situation where the land area of Cerilia is the size of Europe minus Russia; the 30 miles default is barely the the Western Roman Empire, doubling one dimension to 60 miles will give you still a bit smaller than Europe or China.

An average 8 provinces realm under each of those is in increasing order the size of Tuscany, Catalunya and Scotland. A single province will be the size of modern-day Luxemburg, more or less the size of Touraine, or the size of Flanders before it lost Artois (which is a bit of a problem there). However, the bigger the scale, the more problematic it also becomes to represent the reality of the smaller nobility and the people with the rules, which imho is a bit of a hole.
Anuire, for a last example (including the Awnshegs and the Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Caelcorwynn, Albiele and Mieres) is either the size of Spain, Peru or Mexico, more or less.

5

Yea, “…as the crow flies…” was meant to convey even with roads - there’s no direct route from west to east across the continent. Realize too, I’m painting an imaginary rectangle over the land mass and measuring the rectangle (it was supposed to have been a 5 minute tour of the mind, just I found it interesting & there was no size for the continent when I searched on forum to verify).

Solonar - that 25 miles a day is based on current reported statistics. Andrew & Gwrthefyr likely closer to correct (which one is more so, I tend to like G’s napolean argument - but for game purposes Andrew’s might be safer). The biggest reason was conditions of roads or lack of roads. When they say, “..an army marches on their stomach…” they literally mean the old armies had to as slow as their baggage train, which was pretty slow. Humans on foot with a backpack can do some pretty incredible mileage - but when the food in the pack runs out - that’s it! Stories of the Scots travelling across the land two days to meet & fight the same day aren’t much of exaggerations - they didn’t have baggage trains sometimes.

As to the size of each province, get a ruler & measure each one.

I’m sure there’s examples that fit Gwrthefyr’s description - as I said this is an average of the continent. One thing I didn’t mention was that you need to subtract the sublets, inlets, bays, harbors, lakes, tributaries etc from the main number - as there are several province sized chunks of the sea squeezed in there.

If someone wanted the real land mass, below is for you to crunch the numbers.

Complete list of all the borders which need to be subtracted to account for where the sea fell in to my box. (when I say measurement it’s the length of the ruler that matches 75 miles on the legend of the map):
[ul]
[li]Tael Firth: 3 x 3 measurement -> 75 miles x 75 miles is 5625 squared miles you need to take from the original number
[/li][li]Krakennauricht: 4 x 6 measurement -> 100 miles x 150 miles is 15000 squared miles
[/li][li]At the corner of Roykenskapa: 2 x 3 & 2 x 6 area should be removed, lets call it 375 mi^2 & 7500 mi^2
[/li][li]Leviathan’s Reach: 1 x 1, 4 x 7 (half for triangular), 2 x 3
[/li][li]Just south of L.R.: 2.5 x 3 (half for triangular)
[/li][li]Meire El-Mersaf: 2 x 2
[/li][li]Half of Sea of Dragons: 1 x 2
[/li][li]Bay of Araji Deeps: 1 x 1
[/li][li]Baire El-Mehare: 8 x 3 (half for islands/continent in measure box)
[/li][li]Island of Harpy to Straits of Aerale: 7 x 3 (half for islands/continent in measure box)
[/li][li]Miere Rhuann to the Straits of Aerale: 1.5 x 3
[/li][/ul]

The significance of the the map is we have hard line rules of what the game makers envisioned for size. All it would take is someone to go pull a ruler & use the map scale in upper right corner. Mathematically correct distances which to base & apply terrain/seasonal/elevation effects too. There’s another post where they are thinking of going without province levels, this would probably be an aid for it, if indirectly.

Endier: 1.25 x 1.20 at 25 mile per measurement scale(note previously when measuring continent the length of rule was 75 miles per measurement). Thus, Endier is 31.25 miles west to east & 30 miles north to south at it’s greatest points, with a square mileage of 937. (Remember, this is at the greatest point, you can cross it with less times walked if a road ran from the slimmest boarder to the other.

When I need another break, I might finish number crunching. It doesn’t really take a math minor to do this, so don’t feel like you have to take my work as “the word.” On this forum I noticed, to argue effectively, you have roll your sleeves up & do the work yourself, then bring the goods to the table.

6

Please excuse the length of this response and for semi-hijacking the thread, but it`s related to the topic at hand and is inspired by the comments of posters…

Bear in mind that when talking about the speed of armies in history that our examples are almost always of military units much larger than the units at the BR level. Speed goes down as size goes up because travel becomes a matter of logistical organization as much as feet on the ground. Few “armies” in BR terms are going to be more than 4-2,000 men/horses. That`s a good deal smaller than the tens of thousands of troops that Alexander, Napoleon, etc. were moving.

The other thing to keep in mind is that BR units travel during action rounds (1 month) or war moves (1 week.) So, most of the time were talking about how far a unit might travel in a day x6 or x25 (assuming some "slippage" in movement for rest & recuperation.) That means if we assume a low figure for most armies (10 miles/day) and then modify that for the small size of the BR military units (a number that might as much as double the movement speed) then were talking about 120 miles/week for a war move and 500 miles/week for action rounds.

Provinces are irregularly shaped, but generally about 25-30 miles across. So the norm for a military unit would be to move 5 provinces in a war move or 20 in an action round.

There are a lot of other factors that could influence troop speed. The very basic numbers described above could easily be tweaked one way or another by someone who sees “average” speed as a little higher or lower, or the effect of size as more or less significant. Plus, I`m only going to mention briefly the following things that also are very important to the travel times of units:

  1. Cavalry travels faster than foot (not by as much as many people think, but it is a factor.)

  2. Supply trains. An army travels on its stomach, and its meals travel on wagons or pack animals. Armies travel at the speed of their slowest component, and marching without supplies to "live off the land" is a rather risky move. (We hear about how successful it is a lot in military history, but people dont point out as often how that decision has backfired. Most of the time, when you hear about starving troops, that`s the result of the decision to go forward without supply going wrong.)

  3. Season. It`s harder to travel in winter and during rainy seasons.

  4. Terrain is, of course, hugely important.

  5. Roads and bridges. Their existence and quality are obviously very significant.

  6. Experience. Veterans travel faster.

  7. Leadership. A commander motivates his troops to march as much as to fight.

  8. Morale. Troops with more esprit de corps travel faster. Depressed troops shuffle along at a snail`s pace.

  9. Intelligence. I mean “military intelligence” by this one, not the ability score. Most of us are actually used to satellite mapping systems at our disposal, but for most of human history maps were vague and metaphorical, and very few people had a lot of knowledge about what was on the other side of nearby terrain features (rivers, mountains, forests.) The existence of a ditch between points A and B can literally mean the difference between getting someplace or not for an army. We play the game using maps that are, effectively, very much like satellite photos, and players are almost never willing to forego that knowledge for the sake of realism. Without knowledge of the area, travel is extraordinarily slow. Access to a spy, ranger or scout can mean the difference between getting there or not.

  10. Size of the army.

  11. There`s an X factor in that certain racial groups have advantages in movement. Dwarves are sometimes considered better marchers than other races and should get a bonus in mountainous terrain. Not noting that elven troops will move through forested provinces faster
    than human ones would be a problem. Orogs can probably “force march” better than other troops.

So, if one wanted to come up with a number for travel speed then the best way would be have a base number (let`s say 20) for how far someone can travel in a day on average. Then all the factors above should be given a number that would be a multiplier ranging from 0.5 to 1.5. Put it all together and you get an average daily movement for an army.

However, in the standard BR system of war, units couldn`t be moved over a border into another province unless the regent who controlled them had a treaty with the regent who controlled the province, or had declared war on that domain. Most domains are only three or four provinces wide. In a week of travel (the shortest amount of time at the domain level) the troops will go 100 miles on average +/- about 50%. All we really need to know for the purposes of the BR domain system is the number of provinces that an army can travel in a war move or in an action round. To come up with an answer to that one needs to divide the result of the factors above by 25 or 30. One would then get a number (probably around 4-7 and 15-30 respectively) that would be how far an army could travel in those periods.

Given the restrictions on movement over borders in BR, one is probably not going to need the second number very often. I see it only really being a factor if a regent made a treaty with another regent on the other side of the map, and in that case he couldnt move his troops across the map without running into several domains that intervened. He would, therefore, have to move troops by ship... and that is a whole nother set of numbers…

Gary

7

I welcome hijacking so long as it’s tangential in nature - some of the best discussions I’ve seen were such things.

Great point on the size of the great armies & petty squabbles more of Anuire is fighting!

Also, score points for the racial element.

If we’re pushing the well developed, 2,000 years lived in area - I think spy actions or conquest would turn up reliable maps for each province as you cross. Those of course do cost turns/time.

8

While the armies are much smaller than the standard you’ll find for the 18th century, they’re pretty much in line for the bigger realms with what would be fielded in the 14th-15th and even some of the 16th century when taking into account that a lot of these armies were not those of the crown but of various princelings put to the service of their crown, if at all. The regular french army, when Henry IV was crowned, was about 180 BR units in all, and would often be detached in troops the size of a single major duchy’s forces, say about 30 or so units at most. And they still moved slowly: armies became faster despite size increasing because they also rebuilt roads and set up better depot systems; the typical army here doesn’t have much in the way of logistics. And any more than 40 miles in a week of travel on a common basis is vastly irrealistic for a pre-modern army (unless it’s imperial Rome or China), no matter the size: the small piemontese army (still admittedly 100 units) during the Italian Campaigns in 1798 could barely manage 6 miles per day against the ferocious french advance.

For an idea, if I was to take 15th century equivalents, a ducal/marquesal army would be about the size of a Tercio with a cavalry wing (some states are obviously less or more powerful than that, that assumes the rough average of 21 levels to a domain) - 12-18 foot units, 6-9 horse units basically.

9

From what I understand of your example most of these forces arrayed against the French were unmotivated, green & marched with baggage trains. Where the French lived off the land because of their divisional structure allowing their armies to spread over different roads, but still support each other if needed. (http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/c_rma.html)

This leads me to believe the depots & such are not needed (severe penalties if things go wrong). I’m looking at the part where they state, that in 1800-1900’s the marching beat was 70 steps per second. The French took it to 130 steps per second. The French were motivated, possibly green for 2/3’s of their army (part of the same document references two new demi-battalions attached to a seasoned battalion of soldiers).

Gwrthefyr, we need some sort of reference & explanation of what you’re saying - from what I understand in the BCRS, a unit is 200 units including support…like 40 knights in full plate, barded horses with another 80 in chain & rest lightly armored at best (memory hazy). Do you operate under the assumption that all provinces has some form of roads & ignore weather as most people on the forums do?

As it stands now, BR rules imply that if you pay the $$$, the supplies magically exist & move with the army. I only say this, as BR rules have no living off the lands sort of rule system or max army size per province rating (which would imply food supplies).

10

I did a ruck march with 35 lbs ruck 16 miles in 4 hours and im no He-man so a trained infanty unit could do 25 miles a day no problem

11

Thank you for that fact! It’s definitely in line with what I heard at the bar from other guys who served. Was that on the road or what sort of terrain?

Every agrees that the armies move slower than current day armies, we’re just quibbling over the details of how slowly :slight_smile:

12

“includes support” is extremely silly, until the 18th century, support would consist of a crowd of unofficial civilians following armies (easily as many if not more people), and not be integrated in a unit, barring a few cases (Rome, China, a few others). I disregard it for all but knights (which I consider to be lance units: a third knights, a third pages and a third squires). I tend to run under the assumption that the typical infantry unit is about 250, and cavalry about 120, though. More or less. Averaging at 200 to be practical. The unit numbers I gave assume a mid-16th century version of the tercio, although it might have been earlier (the tercio as a unit dates from the 15th century after all, fantasy gun control be damned): it is made of roughly 3.000 soldiers: half are pikemen (1.500, 6-8 units of pikes), a third are light infantry fighting with sword and javelin (4-5 units of irregulars) and the remaining 500 are arquebusiers (let’s say 2-3 units of mixed archers/crossbowmen to give an idea - this is where I crack open Mighty Fortress :wink: ). Add a company of mounted guards (I take for granted that a regent’s bodyguard is almost always a cavalry unit unless stated otherwise), a retinue of knights for the few domains that can afford it (even then I count only about an average of 2 units per realm on average using the optional knight limitation house rule), and various other non household cavalry, typically about 4 units. Adding one troop of scouts and artillery and that’s about it. Anything beyond is likely raised in emergency. Militias vary from vaguely functional to rabble, and in the worst cases your burgers might even end up paying off the poor of the city to take their place, leading to inexistant morale (the spanish knew about it during the french wars of religions, they gained at least one city just by luring away the famished town militia with food, leading to ransomed burgers, and a fed populace who would be less inclined to bite the spanish hand).

I also do not operate under the assumption that major roads are in all provinces, no, it’s as ridiculous as assuming 95% literacy in the late middle ages as the 3rd edition PHB does. Medieval troops also do not have uniforms or much of a marching beat, this kind of drilling comes from the gunpowder armies of the 16th-17th century, again exceptions exist, and obviously some units do need a form of discipline but not as seen in the modern era. And what good is playing a game of rulership if weather is not taken into account.

Also they were not particularly unmotivated, no, they were typical of the period; the 3-5 miles extreme low I gave is actually numbers I’ve seen for the middle ages and the early renaissance (particularly the italian wars). But that was also because the artillery train was extremely slow; supply trains would similarly bog down, and stopping so much that you wonder if you’ve moved: yes the army likely moved more than that, but not in a straight line. You’re still moving an entire tent city after all. And with population numbers as assumed, living off the land is not just an anachronism, it’s an impossibility.

Anecdata about how good you march won’t change the issue at hand: it’s not moving one person, it’s moving a lot of people: I have a NYC pace even with a slight limp and can hike well enough (and regularly go through the city on foot), that still won’t change my position, anything above 6 miles per hour requires advanced logistics, or will risk a lot of eventual attrition. When the Army of Italy did 18 miles a day they were seen as Heman, when the Grande Armée did 15 miles they were seen as He-man, hell, when they did 10 miles they were still feared.

And while a single unit might fare better: a single unit is mincemeat waiting to happen.

13

I did that 16 miles on dirt road around baghdad airport for the german armed forces badge. but 25 miles on a dirt road or trail wouldn’t be a problem most units would have a support vehicles following along wagons in fantasy or medival times with wagonkitchen and food stuff they would not just move out without any type of foodstuff or water.

14

And yet almost no army moved anywhere near that fast until the 18th century. These are not roman legions, they’re landsknechten and medieval footmen. The typical food rations of a soldier were on the order of a pint of beer, a pound of meat and a pound of bread a day: feeding 200 soldiers for two weeks requires about 4 tons of food, plus food for the animals (the meat tags along, it’s not already packed, so pigs, sheep, bull), for their handlers, for the other camp followers: more like 10 tons (I’m tempted to do these calculations at some point actually: food/camp followers to campaign planning length). A walking army of the time period is basically a weaponized nomadic city.

But it’s a bit of a digression I guess…

15

well we can over analyze this till we all turn blue, but 25 miles a days for infantry along a road or trail is not a superman feat.

16

We are basically just trying to find the range. We know two facts:

Humans can do 25 miles a day with luggage.

Any military organization moves at the speed of it’s slowest part (in this case ox/horse/monster driven carts which probably rely on roads (ignore weather for purposes of the game as it’s built into the terrain type movement cost).

Both of you have helped greatly in the discussion, thank you guys!

G - I was going to add that 18th century with entire units outfitted with flintlocks is a bit too much for birthright campaign settings.

17

The important bit is not how fast a typical soldier can march - I can do 30 miles carrying 70 pounds in one day if I have to. And that’s not even along a road - I can do it in rough terrain. And not only that, but I can do it with a company-sized formation without any serious delay. Not that I could keep it up for many days though…then I’d have to go somewhat slower…

The important bit is how fast the baggage can travel. Ox-drawn carts on poor roads. Not so many miles…

18

True, I’m just trying to figure out Gwrthefyr’s argument … he’s mentioning division structured armies with flintlocks (which birthright’s seasonal or elite pre-blackpowder armies don’t have) & the fact he’s not operating with BCRS’s representation of units into this thing. I think it was like a unit of varsk riders is 50 + a 100 of support personal (in a clump as mentioned, but for unit break down’s it’s simpler to establish a ratio).

After that we have a commonly established base movement across plains without roads. From there we apply terrain modifiers & have a speed for every part of the continent & can judge how long it would take for an honor guard of one kingdom to cross (not conqueror) the continent :slight_smile:

19

The BR box clearly states that a province is approx. 20-30 miles across and 1.000 sq./miles on average. As can be seen from the map actual sizes do vary, the above figure is pretty much etched in stone.

Now, it never sat very well with me, which is why I changed it. I played around with several figures, but eventually ended up with 50 miles across and 2.500 square miles per province (on average). The end result you can see on my Aebrynis world-maps (the Earth-comparison maps is especially useful).

Why?

Primarily three things:

  1. Scope. Anuire became very small indeed, not at all to my liking in terms of the scope of things. The Anuirean ‘Empire’ wasn’t all that large after all…and I had a hard time seeing all those diverse cultures fitting in that tiny continent. I wanted something grander, so I ended up multiplying the area by 2.5, which felt about right for me.

  2. Climate and terrain. Despite an lengthy e-mail from the designers detailing why Cerilia made sens in terms of climate, I never bought it. It actually made a lot of sense…but only if applied to a significantly bigger continent.

  3. Armies and warfare. Try as I might I could not get a coherent system working that allowed for warfare and movement on a weekly scale with such small province. Given the small size of provinces and the relatively small number of provinces in any realm movement became effectively meaningless; even heavy infantry co go pretty much anywhere in a week.

20

So the maps aren’t BCRS, besides yours?