I agree if Anuire is like Spain it feels sooo small 
I mention later armies because we have numbers on those along with numbers on some campaigns of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, and the numbers some of you want for movement were only ever reached in the 19th centuries: I’m pointing out how anachronistic it is when even with more advanced supply systems and roads it still was almost impossible to pull off. The point flew over your head entirely, it’s not about the armament, it’s about the organization: we’re not dealing with the roman legions. Also she, if you want to use something neutral use they, he is not.
I don’t operate with the more anachronistic elements just as I don’t use the nonsensical assumption that the Brecht armies fight like in an Errol Flynn movie; the varsk riders might be indeed 50 people but the rest of the warcard is also men at atms. A knight unit won’t all be knights because there was no such thing as an all-knights unit, the knightly formation was based on the lance where each knight would have a squire and a page fighting along. 100 support personnel doesn’t mean this in the sense it’s understood today, what would be support personnel then was not personnel at all, just camp followers, and they would not be paid or included in army numbers. And no army before the middle to late 20th century ever had official numbers that had a “bayonet strength” under 50%, in fact under 60% of the total people even, especially not in ancient times.
And while Spain might feel a bit small, until the fall of Leon, the kings of Leon were considered emperors of Spain; technology changes the scale of things a lot 
Don’t we have historical data from Europe about army sizes and movements in the middle ages/Renaissance ? For example, the various crusades, invasions and defensive maneuvers. What can they tell us about it all?
Sorontar
The highest numbers I find are 10-12 miles a day, and they’re for late anglosaxon England; in both cases they led to exhausted anglosaxon armies (Stamford Bridge and Hastings) - Stamford bridge was only won by the english because they caught the vikings by surprise and unarmored and were almost three times their number (15.000 vs 6.000), Hastings, well, we know what happened to the english there. These are armies in home terrain, following the equivalent of wood and dirt roads on mostly flat land. I had a book somewhere listing around 6-8 miles as the highest average speeds (50-ish miles a week) but I lost track of it. The 3-4 I’ve seen is for very harsh terrain, mountain combat and the like. Exhaustion in the worst cases can lead to almost no movement: at Hattin the franks were so exhausted they didn’t even attempt a breakthrough. The 7th crusade took 3-4 months to get to Constantinople by sea, embarking in Provence (my mistake, the 5th was the failed bid of the latin empire; some sources call this one the 6th, obviously miffed that the only crusade to have any lasting chance at peace was led by an excommunicated near agnostic whose realms had freedom of religion, among other things ).
A lot of the variation seems to be based on the general, which makes slight sense as the general makes the strategic decisions; having a system to represent the effects of overextended forced marches, surprise, and supplies might be the best bet: it wouldn’t be too terribly hard really to take into account camp followers (which could get beyond ridiculous as the highest nobles would end up having the suites of the suites of their suites tagging along). The problem with much faster is not your soldiers, it’s your supply train and your organization: sure an individual soldier can walk 20 miles a day, and cavalry on the rush can even do four times that if they push hard, but whether they can do it as a unit is a complete other matter.
Well, probably my problem is that in Spain at that time there were very few realms: Leon, Castilla, Galicia, Navarra, Aragon, Portugal and Al-Andalus (if I remember things more or less right). While in Anuire there are a ton of realms out there. So that’s why the two images don’t work together in my head 
Al-Andalus was divided into 24 principalities when it broke apart; the long titulature of the kings of Portugal and Spain adds up to 17 royal and 2 princely crowns (including Asturias), plus Viscaya.
That one I didn’t quite understand…
The Aebrynis world maps I made are not related to the BRCS in any way; quite the contrary - they are breaking canon.
Gwrthefyr: I as a personal choice on this forum, do not use ’ “argumentum ad hominem” ', your profile & posts in my thread at the time of my previous post simply didn’t have any indicator that you were female. The fault is entirely yours for taking offense, no one could have known you were female without previous knowledge…UNLESS: they cast a realm spell! You consistently use poor taste in your language. Once you have been around for awhile, you will notice that many arguments on theoretical relationships here use certain basic assumptions or canon as the term is thrown around, it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to verify you’re operating with the same rules.
I forgive you for getting catty. Welcome to my thread. I will say your last post was much better than your previous, thank you for those details.
I was serious when I said I was trying to realize why you were using your anachronistic arguments? We already had established that weather, supply depots, resource levels in provinces were not factors & that we were searching for a base movement - yet there has to be a reason you brought it up. Especially after knowing elements like that developed later for “modern armies” of the French Revolution? This is where the confusion entered, like you came late to a conversation.
GreenKnight: I’m not sure how to work your versions of the maps in there? If what you’re saying about a week to cross a province, then we can just count the number of provinces & add weeks to the end for how long to march (minus terrain? maybe?). I was on your site last night for some other research & took a peak - very cool stuff by the way!
So as the thread stands:
We want a basic movement rate on plains without roads…minus weather/supply availability (as BR has no mechanics for them).
-We know the modern man can march 15 miles in 8 hours with 30-50lbs & on rough, non-road terrain.
-We don’t know the pack & armor + weapon weight of particular armies…but don’t want specifics based on racial armies of the humans - just an average.
-We need to allow for armies without baggage trains & with baggage trains…two base speeds.
New ideas to the thread on my part:
Modern man is both taller & stronger than men from previous times? I have heard it both ways, back in the day English bow men supposedly had at least one arm bigger than the average thigh of modern men or that the average man now is taller by 4" or more than those of the dark ages. So maybe that’s why they march slower? (Idea is hogwash, but amusing)
We’ve got better carts/wagons to move the bulk of our supplies. It’s the last thing I can think of besides laziness & no motivation (who wants to march in a conscript army anyways).
Why not? These guys from the south banded together & conquered a continent? At least in the Imperial City we should be talking basically roman legions…if not the south & east coasts entirely.
(Oh lord, another tangant … how many can one thread support?!)
GreenKnight: I mapped a province by province route using only plains & 3 mountain terrain types … 53.
If we use week = province that’s 12 months to cross continent (assuming we don’t stop to fight anyone, have unlimited food, march everyday, have paid the soldiers, promised new sneakers to every peasant & to plant their fields in their stead, etc, …yes humor)
Besides the ridiculous bit that precedes (if I have no indicator that I’m female it’s exactly to avoid the kind of sexist comment this here is: I did not get “catty”, I simply remarked on something that annoys me), male is only a default for people who are too lazy to use the proper neutral pronouns.
For the rest I’m using anachronistic but much more advanced societies to illustrate my point: if I still had my direct data on the italian wars and the french wars of religion I could find the exact numbers, but they’re even lower. It has nothing to do with the capacities of an individual but the capabilities of an organization. An army is not an adventuring party, it’s a large nomadic horde, even if temporarily so.
And no, there is no unit that compares to the roman legion in its makeup or training if we go by canon, they’re typical medieval units.
Men can be just as catty as women and I would prefer that people keep it to a minimum.
Agreed, the first two who I bumped in to on here before the server wipe were dudes & I used the same word “catty” for them. Though, I reread Gwrthefyr’s posts in the thread & that’s what finally prompted me to bring it to attention(note most/all threads in question have been under the edit gun). I had four ideas of what to put here, but in the end it looks like we lost all but the regulars already. So plainly seems best. If you’re here to help us understand Gwrthefyr, then do it & leave the extra adverbs or negative/belittling commentary on some other forum. We can all wipe out the thesaurus, we just don’t bother. We don’t need forum trolls or gremlins.
As to the roman thing: I’m thinking all collapses don’t happen at the same time, that’s why the last strong hold of the old order - The Imperial City should be using old uniforms & traditions or training methods - as time goes on, they cling more to their tradition. The old guy running the city has enough real power to make it too expensive for it to be worth subjugating the city - maybe that’s why, they can hold till someone else arrives to rescue. It’s just one place I think the cannon is off. Like I said before, my opinion.
It should have lots of problems compared to you.
Really Trained infantry is a rarity as long as no standing army exists beyond an enlarged bodyguard. And standing large armys are a novelty compared to medieval times.
Then nowaday you have roads to travel. Roads not even in the sense of Autobahnen or tracks covered with tar - but at least regularily maintained and repaired roads. That too is a novelty compared to medieval times. Someone in a PBEM once suggested the books of Paksenarrion as a good read to me - and in those an army travels across roads which turns to a muddy nightmare with mudfilled holes as deep as a man as soon as it starts pouring rain.
Equipment is another factor to consider. What you carry in your backpack nowadays usually is light. At least I don´t carry a waterproof mantle made from heavy wool or such stuff. There are no really lightweight synthetic materials whatsoever in old times.
There are two ways of looking at the design/etc for any new mechanic.
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Look at history, and extrapolate forward/sideways to come up with a mechanic with the desired level of realism and simplicity - that’s how Gwrthefyr appears to be approaching the question
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Look at the existing mechanics and work backwards. That seems to be how Mirviriam is looking at things.
In the first approach, logistics are key. In the second they are irrelevant as the existing mechanics didn’t want that level of detail/realism so simply ignored them.
Neither approach is wrong, both simply suit different styles of play and different people. Both are quite capable of being constructive and useful.
The end result, whichever method is chosen, should however be consistent with making the game more interesting and fun, while not turning us (well everyone else) into accountants.
I prefer the first approach, and want to end up with a system that allows for:
- random spanners in the works that might slow/stop an army as obstacles PCs can overcome or which they can inflict on enemies.
- relatively slow movement to encourage positioning and scouting to give low level PCs adventure opportunities.
- give an advantage to defenders in their own realms (good maps/local knowledge, known places for supply) to reduce the risk approach to domain play.
- realism, so that PCs can plan and have a good idea of whether ‘x’ will cause ‘y’ or ‘z’.
So I’d incorporate logistics where interesting, mainly as matters of justice, or other random events, and slow armies to a nice easy 10 miles a day to keep the math easy. Particularly crap armies do 5, extra-ordinary ones do 15. Unrealistically simple, but perfectly viable.
Delays that haven’t been mentioned:
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Nobles and others have rights over land, to avoid making enemies armies must often win the right to cross land, trade in cities, etc - there isn’t a lot of surplus in a medieval world and a large army can lead to famine or strip every horse/etc from a community even if it pays for what it takes, meaning that even friendly people may refuse to sell all goods that the army needs. Simply taking what you want is highly risky - even in your ‘own realm’.
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If you are lucky enough to have an organised baggage train, it is heavily laden carts of food, clothes, weapons etc - perfect for every bandit to raid, every landowner or church to tax, etc, etc - it must be properly camped each night and rest point to stop it being looted one way or the other, and it probably has to detour around a hundred petty manors where the lord is unfriendly in addition to avoiding bad terrain - no baggage cart is going to travel in a remotely straight line, so it may move a fair distance but only have net movement of the amounts suggested above.
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If you are feeding off the land, the army is generally either small or very slow. You can have point-to-point rapid travels where armies know that they can get food at ‘X’ and then simply load up with the day or two they need, move like the blazes and then rest at the other end without ever worrying about supply - but that’s only safe inside the realm usually.
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Slowing the main army you have diseases such as epidemic typhus which was the scourge of many armies (it probably changed the course of a number of wars) - troops may not even move at all for days on end if stricken by typhus or a host of other diseases. Clerical healing may cure the leading officer reducing the delays due to lack of command, but most troops are loyal to ‘their lord’ and will be hard for the general to move if the minor lord is struck down - and clerical healing can only cure a very small number of people from illnesses.
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You also have internal dissent in the army. Every feudal lord knows best, some will take the chance of moving through ‘friendly territory’ to settle old scores, or when moving through other territory to crush competition for their workers (rival weaving villages for example) or expand their territory - the army may have to stop often to deal with the diplomatic outcomes.
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Hostile forces. If moving in hostile terrain most armies will be at least slightly cautious. Modern armies have exceptional abilities of communication and visibility. Only a mage can provide either of these abilities to a birthright army. Most armies rely on scouts, who must physically travel to a place to look for enemies and then return to tell the tale, or tales from bribed locals who are unreliable. An army could sit still for days or weeks while waiting to find out where ‘the other’ army is before risking moving across hostile terrain.
I’d add that a modern army is, by medieval standards, ridiculously healthy and extremely well fed. Pay is not something I feel I have a right to comment on as it is still far from good for most soldiers, but was so bad that it was routinely the cause of mass desertions in the past.
I loved that part of the new robin hood movie, where Richard the Lionheart is sacking his way back across France with that tiny little army! 
As for technique - I don’t care which direction you work - so long as no one attacks anyone…this community is not big enough to survive such foolishness.
If someone can build a full argument for the historical side, they’d make great level three rules. Once we have a web play system, adding in other Editions & level 3 rules wouldn’t be far behind. I have no idea how long, but coming up with a more realistic game of role play in fantasy settings is where I eventually seeing birthright going. I doubt it will carry the name, but a child none the less.
After a lot of think I decided upon some figures for my own games.
These are averages - representing a ‘typical’ medium-sized army that’s fairly well-supplied, well led etc. and moving through non-friendly, but not necessarily openly hostile provinces.
From this base number I can work out endless permutations - some of the common, like terrain and infrastructure, others applied on the fly as campaigns play themselves out.
Assuming provinces of 50x50 miles.
Assuming 8 day weeks
Assuming 1-2 rest days per week of marching
The average infantry unit would have Speed 2 - i.e. it can move two plains provinces in one week. Since almost all armies will contain infantry this is also the speed of armies on the march - the baggage train and camp followers can keep up this pace.
That’s 100 miles in one week. 12 or so miles per day on average.
I find this to be a reasonable base figure - and it also has the advantage that (given the above province sizes) of making speed matter. You can’t be everywhere in Anuire in just one war move.
I came across a post on the web on the subject of soldier’s loads a while back and wiki’d a summary of some parts of it:
http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/User:AndrewTall/Soldier's_load
Based on: Battlefield Mobility And The Soldier’s Load by Major William L. Ezell, USMC
I’m curious, Greenknight: with a 2500sqmi province, what did you do with populations?
I prefer a larger Cerilia, both in terms of landmass and population, for various reasons, but note that even in ancient times, population density tended to be quite a bit higher than what is often assumed by the Province Level = Population crowd.
Regarding marching distances, this has been a good discussion.
I wonder if good abstractions can be made for some of the major factors identified. One might assume, then, a base of 6 miles/day (maybe 4 if artillery is included, 8 if only cavalry). That would yield about 50 miles in a week (2 provinces by normal BR standards, 1 by GK’s)
- Small forces without baggage trains can move faster than large ones with (double move?). Presumably these could move maybe a week without the baggage trains and then need to resupply by pillage, or maybe they could live off the land (forage); either way, the capacity of the land to support them would be limited (say, 1 unit per max province level by terrain)
- Large forces with baggage trains but traveling on roads can obviously move faster (this is already nicely built into the standard BR system, where roads double movement rates)
- Well-disciplined forces move marginally faster than not (I’d say these would simply gain bonuses to discipline checks to reduce the effects of forced marches, or would gain initiative over opponents)
- Forced marches fatigue troops quickly, but can cover greater ground (double?)
Thus, over plains terrain, we have a variance of 4 miles (artillery included in large armies, conventional baggage trains) to 32 miles (cavalry only, either on roads or small forces without supply trains, forced march in either case). Most commonly, between 6 and 12 miles per day (2-4provinces per week at standard size).
Since the area increased by a factor of 2.5 it was natural to increase the population by a similar amount. I did not radically alter the pop/sq. mi.
I did, however, increase the province LEVEL in most parts of Cerilia, especially in the more civilized parts, so that indirectly caused an even greater shift in population.
Anuire = Lvl 11
Ariya = Lvl 10
Ilien = Lvl 9
Endier = Lvl 8
Calrie = Lvl 7
Caercas = Lvl 6
Rural provinces in Anuire = Lvl 4.6 (with just a few lvl 3 thrown in at the fringes).
Endier, for example, has a pop of around 180.000 people.
Alamie, 530.000.