How Should War Work

Dungeons & Dragons The Royal Library
1

My assumption is that the world exists as it does for reasons (rather by accident).

[ul]
[li] realms are the size they are for a reason
[/li][li] realms and domains are not easily toppled, many have been around a very long time
[/li][li] war is pretty frequent, but it doesn’t much change the map
[/li][/ul]

With these in mind, I outline what war looks like. There is a great deal of advantage to the defensive, so that offensive war is challenging. If the advantage lays with the defender, it makes sense that there are so many small states. All they need are the fundamentals of defense. Part of this is a good network of castles. Part is reflected in the difficulty in raising truly offensive units. Part is reflected in the way militia works.

Fortifications
Given the age of the setting and its reasonably static nature, I would imagine that there are many very strong fortresses whose capture would be long and difficult and would represent a significant event. One such example of what this might entail would be the historical siege of Calais, which lasted from the Sept 4, 1346 to Aug 3, 1347. Seven to Eight thousand citizens held off 20,000 Archers, 6600 English Infantry, 2000 Flemish Infantry, and 5300 Knights. In this example, the French never tried to lift the siege. French supplies arrived by sea, but the English tried to stop them and eventually set up an effective blockade.

Imagine the difficulty in taking Ilien if the same circumstances were in play. It would not be hard to imagine the same overall situation, after reading a description of the events surrounding Calais. Despite the fact that 34,000 man armies would be exceptional in BR (what is that - 170 units sitting around waiting for surrender?) there is no real mechanism for a siege to last that long.

What if the way Roesone, Ilien, and Medoere gained independence was that the founder-heros gained control of key fortresses by treachery, the citizens throwing open the gates, or other means? Then Diemed spent the rest of the civil war winning battles in a futile attempt to recover the lands lost, because battles won mean nothing without capturing the key fortresses in the realm.

Elite Units
Perhaps the reason realms maintain the forces that they do is that they cannot raise units of such quality when they need them, so they keep them around so they have them when they need them. As such, additional troops raised would be no better than irregulars or levies. Growing similar units would either be slow, or would require experience.

Levies
There might be levies who rise up for the defense of the province and disappear in all other circumstances. This would also significantly improve the defensive posture of realms without increasing offensive capacity. Levies could be smart, too. They might bide their time until the defender’s main army entered the province, rather than rising up to get defeated by an unopposed attacker. Instead they might engage in Robin Hood type guerrilla warfare.

Another thing that would tend to maintain the staus quo is a dynastic tie to the land. Even when some new person gets invested in a province (or even a whole realm) the old tie isn’t broken, and can be easily re-established as soon as you occupy the province.

2

I figure that realms can temporarily change quite easly - the problem is changing cultural attitudes and over-coming geographic barriers to make the change last. Most realms in Anuire are divided by rivers, mountains, etc so naturally split along their existing borders.

So Avani conquers Diemed for example, and a generation later with son #1 in Avanil and son #2 in Diemed, son #2 sees that there is a big river between them preventing easy troop movement and therefore either son #1 recognises son #2 as an independent vassal or risks seeing him become simply independent…

I’m not sure quite how to represent different cultures and realm loyalties - a traits system would be an additional layer of complexity but even just allowing a DC modifier to realm actions and domain attitude checks ‘old’ and ‘new’ rulers would encourage the old realms to reform for a while (eventually such loyalties wear thin). I’d note however that players get very annoyed if their actions seem pointless or pre-ordained - they need to be able to ‘win’ and so should be able to conquer other realms.

I’d expect that Anuire has probably seen a number of short-lived ‘mega realms’ since the fall of the empire - they just never held together long enough to be worth mentioning in RoE (or weren’t favoured by the chamberlain and were therefore censored, such as the realm of ‘Greater Boeruine’ which forms one basis for the current Dukes claims over Taeghas, say).

On castles you could rule that the attackers and defenders make an opposed siegecraft roll - the castle only degrades if the attacker wins the roll rather than simply degrade the castle each season. That allows a great general to keep going for longer - or say that if ships can deliver supplies that the castle doesn’t degrade at all, meaning that a seige ties up both land and sea units to be effective.

Another possibility is that random events occur more often in larger realms - I hacked out some draft mechanics on the wiki to reflect such a system although I need to test it out. That would mean that regents, particularly those with weaker bloodlines would need to create vassals to govern effectively, which then encourages separatism, etc.

http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/User:AndrewTall/Random_events_mechanics

3

Opposed Siegecraft rolls is great idea to represent active Siege. You can modify it by various events, army size, etc…

Anyway what kgauck’s said; add to that “Muster over time” rule, and limit maximum number units that province could muster, unit experience, command groups, and traits… And You’ll get Sieges that could last long, and War that it is far more interesting…

4

You offer some nice ideas here, and I’d like to hear in more detail how you would implement them rules-wise. Some of the things mentioned I can picture, like slow musters, experience that has to be earned etc., but namely kgauck’s levy-based guerilla warfare sounds like a great idea, but how would you do this in your game?

For now, I don’t really have anything of my own to offer with regard to war, however:

[/li]

Another thing to consider is, how much power the realm or domain rulers really held (or still hold) over their respective areas of influence. Andrew Tall’s view seems to me to be akin to the situation after the death of Alexander the Great, when the Diadochi divided his empire and warred against each other, with differing successes and changing alliances. This is certainly a possible view, but it also implies a rather centralized state - otherwise, the Diadochi would’ve had greater difficulties establishing their authority, instead of ‘only’ having to deal with each other.

Well, I recently read about the development of territorial governance within the Holy Roman Empire and that started me thinking on BR:

Perhaps, during the Empire, the realm rulers’ power over their dominion wasn’t as absolute as portrayed in the BR rules and subordinate nobles (provincial counts and below) had a greater amount of independence, i.e. controlled many of the provincial law holdings, similar to the situation portrayed for some Rjurik lands. Some of these lower nobles might also have had direct contact to the Emperor, for instance due to a younger son serving in the Emperor’s personal guard or by participating in a imperial campaign. The Emperor would also have a keen interest in strengthening the minor nobles to keep his major vassals in check.

After the fall of the Empire, the greater nobles first started to consolidate and increase their power in their own lands, a slow process which explains why the realms remained so static for so long, barring special circumstances, like the rise of Ghoere or the Tuornen/Alamie split. This also helps explain how realms like Medoere or Roesone could break away from a powerful realm like Diemed.

Now, i.e. with the situation as portrayed in the rulebooks, this inner consolidation is mostly finished, and the larger powers have started to look outside their realms to increase their power, and things are about to change, meaning that the PCs will live in interesting times…

As an afterthought, some of the law holdings held in other realms, let’s say for example Avanil’s holdings in Tuornen, are perhaps not really directly controlled by Darien Avan, but rather represent remaining local law holdings of minor nobles who have developed an affiliation with Avanil. This would be similar to what I proposed in this thread a few weeks ago:http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3601

5

The only times in which any PC should live :slight_smile:

6

One thing that also has to be considered is that current realms also exist due to strategic alliance/treaties.

There have to be a bunch of documented treaties that have been signed by rulers re mutual defence vs aggression - although I can’t particularly remember reading about any in the histories.

Diplomacy shields the smaller and weaker (militarily speaking) provinces from being grabbed.

That and the more powerful Scion’s have no interest in just letting anyone else get bigger to possibly become a threat to them.

7

Mutual defense treaties are a product of the 19th century, when the time involved in mobilization was so swift that there was no time for diplomacy before the war started. Mobilization times in early modern wars could last a full year for major states.

Mobilization requires both assembling units and recruiting new men. Recruiting requires a team of men to go from town to town hiring people who are basically unemployed or otherwise seeking to escape their current circumstances despite the risky new occupation being offered. Attempting to recruit people who are productive will deny your realm taxes, food, and things like nails. Recruiting is one of the most easily observable actions you take in your realm. Whenever anyone recruits units, all of their neighbors should know pretty specifically what they are doing.

For instance, it should be impossible for Avanil to drop 120 GB in a single action, raise 60 units and occupy Diemed in a couple of weeks. One rule of thumb to apply is that if you would not let an NPC realm do it (raise a gigantic army over night) and conquer a PC realm, I wouldn’t let a PC do it to an NPC.

The situation in the rulebook does suggest that the domains are pretty unitary, but this cuts you out of half of the kinds of conflicts which a realm can experience. Its like saying nothing interesting ever happens on this half of the map. When you get away from the rulebook and read the PS’s they depict domains that are pretty disunited. Most of them look like they are about to fall apart. The PS’s focus much more on the internal problems within a realm.

Generally I apply the Arthurian arc to a campaign.
phase 1 before the PC(s) take over, PC’s as heirs
sword in the stone moment- PC’s take over
phase 2 PC’s find the realm disunited, must solve internal problems
marriage to Guinevere - realm united
This phase sees the older, starting figures give way to the PC’s, as they become the key nobles, officers, and regents in the realm. It can be quick, or happen over time.
phase 3 PC’s turn outward and deal with problems they have merely kept at bay until now.

The PC’s may deal with foreign challenges in phases 1 and 2, but most foreign challenges don’t get resolved until phase 3.

8

Hm… quite a good insight of you.

Both?

Like in crusader kings, the problem is simple. Nobles fight each other instead of allying and then they are defeated by the Shadow easily. Well, in the PC game, the boardgame is different.

To keep this short, your rules by now allow a lot and anybody worthy to be called game master or mistress should be able to make up rules on their own.

Could you define and structure both “variants” so players by attitude or whim could decide how the game is played on that? Rhetorical question.

9

Call them standing alliances if you will or informal alliances (and call me anacronistic if you will) but I would think that logically if you are bordering a large aggressive kingdom you would work something out with other smaller rulers that face the same problem and could be swallowed at a gulp. Alliance systems in BR don’t have to entirely parallel our own history.

Fortresses do slow this down - instant absorbtion and allow time for diplomatic recruitment of allies.

I was suggesting this as another possible reason for the Status Quo to remain fairly stagnant. (As you yourself point out mobilisation times are pretty quick)

Small city states before the rise of large countries in Europe spring to mind.
Often marriages would cement alliances.

Ghoere for instance could invade almost any neighbour and outnumber them between 3 and 5 to one - especially with recruitment and mercs.- so without alliances to stop him and considering his aggressive reputation I can’t think of anything else stopping him.:slight_smile:

10

What I am objecting to primarily is that anyone can swallow anyone else in a gulp. Its because I find this artificial and too much like a simple game (breaking the sense that this is a world), I don’t see the need to have structures like modern alliance systems to prevent it.

There should be three things that make this kind of thing impossible.

  1. recruitment should take long enough that other powers can engage in diplomacy and so by the time the attack comes, no one is forced to be alone.
  2. logistics prevent the formation of large armies, especially on the fly. Putting together a proper supply train often took much longer than recruiting and assembling an army.
  3. I think that with Haelyn as a god of both law and war, the concept of a war waged for legitimate aims would be very important. As a result, the beginnings of wars would probably be very ritualistic, with formal declarations of the cause of a conflict, announced deadlines to settle a matter before either side lets slip the dogs of war, rather like the way a strike works today with formal grievances, and then strike deadlines. People who just throw a bunch of troops together and occupy a neighbor without going through these steps would be waging a war outside of the law, and bring in the wrath of the temples of Haelyn. I have to imagine it would be almost impossible to wage effective warfare without their cooperation.

Ghoere for instance could invade almost any neighbour and outnumber them between 3 and 5 to one - especially with recruitment and mercs.- so without alliances to stop him and considering his aggressive reputation I can’t think of anything else stopping him.:slight_smile:

Let us suppose a steady state of petty squabbling, in which each realm bickers with all of its neighbors. Then suddenly Ghoere starts recruiting men, mustering its veterans, and calling for mercenaries. What I imagine would happen is that realms would send envoys to Ghoere asking what they are doing. If no satisfactory explanation was offered, envoys would go out to neighboring realms and seek a consensus on what to do about Ghoere. A coalition would form and Ghoere would face the mobilization of most or all of its neighbors.

So, I think the more natural state of things would involve responsive diplomacy for most states. Allies are generally unreliable anyway. Sometimes disastrously so. They are too often pre-occupied with their own business, or when push comes to shove they are happy to see you get shoved a bit. Sometimes they have reconciled with the other party and are now in no mood to antagonize them by responding to old treaty obligations.

Smaller states can’t really ally with larger states. The proper relationship for small states that need protection is vassalage.

11

That´s fine for Anuire, possibly Khinasi and the Rjurik Highlands, but not for the other nations or races - I can´t see the awnsheghlien generals caring about what Haeyln´s priests say or any formalities beforehand and I wouldn´t want them to have an advantage - they are tough enough already!

Longer build times for armies (1d4 per turn per court action like any other build?) is a good start, making it a public expenditure makes subterfuge difficult, increased costs for occupying armies and hostile investiture would also reduce the gulp factor - if the enemy has to occupy for 3-4 seasons while they eat the realm one bite at a time gives the defender time to call for support.

I´ve considered some sort of realm traits system to make conquest harder (increased domain attitude DC´s for a period etc) but BR is already a pretty complex game and traits just increase the learning curve required…

12

Nor can I see awnsheghlein caring about what Haelyn thinks- they are already ideological enemies. Even further, they are monsters, meaing one who excites horror by wickedness, cruelty, &c. They are so different as to require a whole seperate consideration.

I’m not clear on your discussion of their advantage? Are you opposing the idea that an awnsheghlien might launch a surprise attack? That would seem to be the very avatar of an awnsheghlien.

Did you mean to exclude the Brecht? For I see it that the Brecht are the most in need of Haelyn in war, for their own patron, Sera is the least warlike of all the gods (except maybe Laerme).

I´ve considered some sort of realm traits system to make conquest harder (increased domain attitude DC´s for a period etc) but BR is already a pretty complex game and traits just increase the learning curve required…

I am loathe to add rules. This kind of thing should be in the pervue of the DM and the players should know nothing first hand of the mechanics of game play. Good advisors can provide neccesary exposition about how the world works.

13

My thought was simply that telling Anuirean regents that war takes 2-4 rounds to prepare is fine since it represents lack of communication, etc in a medieval world - but ideally the source of the delay should be due to a non-cultural specific action, otherwise the Gorgon whelms in 1 and charges which gives him, and other awnies, elves, goblins, etc a further advantage over the humans. I agree with all of them prefering sneaks attacks and so on though.

The point re: non-Anuire was that Haelyn is god of law+war - so is a very good example of the god who would require formalities before war, I wasn´t so sure with Avani, Erik, etc. Thinking more about it Avani quite possibly requires some exposition and Erik mediation between the parties to prove lack of reconciliation (if both are Rjuvik) which also causes a delay, Belinik may require ritual sacrifices and the like, but I can´t see the check on the goblins, orogs etc - and they need to have a delaying factor as well otherwise the human regent says “Í annoy the priests now to win the war, then say ´sorry´ later - victory excuses all”.

The reason I consider adding rules is to prevent arguments later, but I´d prefer just to say ´be reasonable and don´t expect surprise invasions unless you take a LOT of care and use an existing army´ - it depends on the players though.

14

There are three kinds of things that cause delays. Forming the army (recruitment, musters, &c), Assembling the army (provisioning, moving recruits to a common location), and the need to declare one’s cause of war.

Its possible to bypass all three under certain conditions, but what you will be able to put forward,whether human or goblin, or whatever, is a raiding force. It would lack the strength to attack defended points, and would be suitable for causing a little mayhem and distracting the regent. It could not occupy a province or be sure of defeating even militia.

If you bypass two, say Markasor takes its existing standing force, and invades Mhoried, so there are no musters, and no declaration, you still have to assemble the army near Mhoried before you get to Mhoried. A large goblin force will be spotted by someone. Armies are not easy to conceal. They may be able to conceal their intentions, and even their precise location, but their existence is obvious if there is anyone to look. For instance, armies on the move create a giant dust cloud. I’m sure every shepherd of Mhoried knows what it means to see a giant dust cloud being kicked up across the border in Markasor. While you would not be have time to recruit new troops, you would only have missed a single war move and will be meeting a force already in your country. However, they would not have time to do much more than pillage. If Mhoried maintains a standing force capable of receiving the standing force of Markasor, then they are able to give battle.

There is a question, about how secretly the Gorgon could muster troops. He is surrounded mostly by vassals. Even though the Gorgon must advertise his desire for troops within his realm, he can position his musters so that word must travel through vassals or from foreign cultures. Danigau might recieve rumors that the elves of Tuarhievel report musters in the Gorgon’s Crown well after those troops are laying siege to an important border fort. Because of the size of his realm, and the questions about its permiability, I could see a greater degree of secrecy for the Gorgon than for other realms. Some of this depends on what you thing life is like in the Crown itself.

I also wonder how well the elves report to humans what they know. It might well be a question of interpreting what the elves know by their own actions, rather than by their reports. Something along the lines of:

Sire, the elves move a company of their cavalry and two companies of archers from east to west, perhaps more troops move in the north. The Gorgon seems to be up to something.

As time goes on, you begin to rule out a direct attack by the Gorgon on the elves and begin to suspect the elves spotted troop musters or movements and simply went to an alert posture.

Of course Mheallie Bireon has guild holdings in Tuarhievel, and would know the most. What does she reveal and to whom?

15

Sounds good - large realms get to hide stuff in their core (say a delay of the ´noise´reachiung the outside, or reduced impact of the action due to distance from nosy nieghbours). Of course the Gorgon then has the bother of shipping his troops half way across his kingdom - but they hit without much warning.

The Gorgon has the added advantage over the Raven for example, of no guild holdings - so few wandering merchants etc to spread the word. By contrast Kalien for example probably knows about troops movements across half of Anuire even if the target is too far away to hear the rumours directly…

Similarly if you maintain a large army you can act, and react very quickly - but at the substantial cost of maintaining the army. Ships become more useful as well do the speed of shipping troops as opposed to trogging.

Re: the 3 factors, you might also say that troops ´rushed in´have reduced effectivness at emulating law holdings, attacking fortifications, etc depending on how rushed the move was - and what RP ´cover´the rush gets.

16

Indeed, warfare should rely more on raiding and less on decisive battles IMO.
I had a similar problem in an internet game I was designing, and I had thought about the following (but maybe they would not work there), to avoid the big decisive battle syndrome:

There needs to be an evasion mechanism to allow a larger one so that it is viable, and one to solve skirmishes, as raiding parties would probably be split. In most systems I have seen, the “stealth” of the raiding army would depend on the speed and size of the force, while the detection capacity of the patrolling one would depend on the forces sent into patrol. There needs to be some mechanism to restrict the moves of a patrolling army

Another way to limit warfare would be to factor the time needed for forraging:
A huge army would use too much supplies to be carted (unless ship transport is possible), thus, they’d need to depend more on foraging, and spend a longer time doing so (because their needs would rapidly exhaust the neighboring supply sourcesn forcing them to do longer foraging trips).
A larger army should be penalized by a smaller movement rate.

The last way to limit warfare, would be to factor the contraints of feodal hosts, that usually only forced vassals to supply troops for a limited amount of time (that would not apply when defending, as they would see the obvious need to come).
Increasing the upkeep cost of an unit once it has spent 3 month outside its realm (or even home province) could do the trick, but that could force too much bookkeeping.

Making siege more rewarding compared to assault would help too, as it would make campagins more expensive and longer.

17

Off Topic

You are able to design a game alone?Sadly I’m able only to make mod or simply games with rpg maker,you should make a new birthright pc game!If you need help I think you will find a lot of volunteers.

18

Off topic:

It was a web multiplayer game though (no heavy coding, only Ruby on rails), and I had to stop working on it for personnal/professionnal reason shortly after having begun the coding itself, but I plan to finish it someday in the future.
It would be hard to make enough money though donations to pay for the IP if we wanted to go with a new birthright game (I am not sure WOTC would release the rights for a computer fame easily), but it should be possible to implement the concepts themselves with a different ruleset and background.

19

I think the inner consolidation is closer to the beginning than the end. Even militant, proto-fascist Ghoere holds only 40 of the 96 province levels his 6 plains and 4 hills provinces allow. I think all those apparently missing people are already there, but his control over them is so incomplete that most of their effort goes into supporting his local landholders’ minor competitions with each other rather than advancing his own realm-scale agenda. Medoere, at 9 province levels held out of 30 possible, is much less centralized, as one expects in a realm which has only recently won its independence from the much more centrally-controlled Diemed (23 levels out of 52). I think none of the realms of Cerilia has a king who can even dream of centralized control comparable to Louis XIV’s, not even the Gorgon. I see the standard campaign setup as waiting for a PC to show up who understands that intensive administrative investment in his realm is necessary to build an economy which can support the really powerful army he needs to make large-scale conquest possible. That is, you suggest the time is ripe for Richard Coeur de Lion to venture off on crusade, but I think it’s 50 years earlier, and his father, Henry FitzEmpress, has yet to make the legal and financial reforms which would later enable his son’s foreign adventures. The time for war in BR is not Turn One, but only after all your provinces are at least level 4 and support both the trade routes they allow, and those guilds are controlled by a loyal vassal whose piles of cash go to pay for your stacks of knight units. The only reason not to wait for all level 7s with 3 TRs each is that your neighbors may beat you to the punch if you do.

20

I like “would be slow”. A suggestion made many years ago which I quickly adopted was that units do not appear until some time after they have been bought, with more powerful units taking longer to show up. The formula I have come to like best is number of GB cost = number of domain turns delay. This means that if you purchase a unit of irregulars, they are assembled, trained, equipped and ready for battle in three months, but a unit of knights takes a year and a half. I also have them count against the number which can be mustered in that province throughout that entire time (so a level 4 province can have at most 4 knights in process at once, not 24). This greatly cuts down on the “massive army overnight” phenomenon, and forces some advertising of martial intent. The only exceptions I make are levies (which show up immediately because they are zero cost, so they’re not really an exception), mercenaries (which cost twice as much as the matching regular unit precisely because there is no delay), and elven archers, dwarf guards, goblin infantry and gnoll marauders (who are the levy-equivalents of their races, even though they are not zero-cost).