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[LordSlowpoke]

Keep it clean guys, no need to get testy.

Residential housing isn't necessarily something to leave entirely to the whims of populace, some basic central planning is required, especially as towns grow. Without proper management, disorganization can abound, turning what would otherwise be a prosperous town into a collection of shanty-hovels with no rhyme or reason to placement.
Much of what was being discussed was merely to encourage the use of sturdier and higher quality building materials anyway. I don't understand why it could hurt to have a few better quality houses up for grabs by the populace either, it's not a big deal.

My completely ignored suggestion was to make quality housing for everyone in our capital city. Imagine the immigration rates when people catch wind of the fact even the peasants who work the whateveritisthatisourstapleproduce field get to live in a semi-manor. Infinite manpower.

[Gervassen]

The main problem is that it breaks my immersion to have centrally planned housing. I want to imagine twisty disorganized streets in our medieval town. I really don't want to read about a socialist centrally-planned utopia in the midst of the Middle Ages.

The second problem is that housing doesn't actually draw anyone to live nearby. No one says, "I want to live in Detroit because it has a lot of empty housing." People want to live where there are good public works, a vibrant and successful culture, and security. If there isn't housing, they simply commission their own.

I say yes to the falconry mews, but no to building private housing. When our city is vibrant enough, people will build their own houses. And let's get back to focusing on our skills and other fun things.

[Mlamlah]

Basic city planing was *not* unusual for the middle ages. It's fine to disagree, but don't try to shoot down an entire discussion.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

IMO it's a bad idea to spend resources to make peasant lives too good and luxurious, it's a medieval society and that's just wrong.
Even public bath is quite generous ( and unneeded, they can use river to wash...), private brick houses for everyone are just way over the roof.

Also, in this era, a big military was a way of saying "your property isn't getting destroyed on our territory" and yet we've got people saying 35 men are enough.

we have 168 citizens. So yeah, that's more than enough. Besides we are too minor to count on our forces for any serious war
Diplomacy and economy are much more important than soldiers. You guys seem to forget that. No one except me even considered looking for a wife, now we are on course on getting a nice ally


And I agree with city planning, it may be untypical for the era, but not something unrealistic

[Mlamlah]

I don't thik that providing access to brick and exercising the most basic of city planning counts as exactly luxurious XD.

Edit: Don't tell me either of those things are unrealistic for the period, because that shows historical ignorance. Clay bricks as a widely used building tool is really really old, and there are streets in british cities that date back to norse occupation a couple centuries off a thousand years ago.

[kaian-a-coel]

Public planning of housing was not uncommon back then, especially in large cities where there's not much place, or after disasters. We are not in these cases, but planned housing have a lot of advantages, especially when it comes to security (criminality AND fires do like disorganized, packed housing).

And while I'm on the topic, a whooping 20% of our pop is in our military. That's huge. Usually it was more like 5%, or less.

[kahn1234]

Erebor Said:
"Tailoring (especially coloring) and the associated tannery tends to be associated with pollution downriver. Considering the Count lives there, I think not. Besides, our town is not large enough to support such an endeavour."


I think you are thinking of tanning, which is leather, not tailoring, which is working with cloth. Far less polluting. And as for our town not being big enough, that would quickly change if we put out word we are looking for skilled clothiers and the like and start buying the raw materials to set it up. The damn thing would pay for itself, earn us tonnes of money and draw migrants by the dozen.

Erebor Said:
"Nope, not doing this. We have exactly 168 citizens living in our capital town. Such a factory'd probably employ several times more than that. Besides, I'm pretty sure we don't have the finances. (The mine isn't that large). Also, I think we don't have the right to produce weapons on that scale."


The whole point of an armour factory in medieval times was to reduce the human resources needed in the production of advanced armour. A medium sized armour factory would only need maybe 3 armourers/weaponsmiths/metalworkers to run it at full efficiency. And most towns in the middle ages were self sufficient in most things, including weapon production so we dont need permission. Also, the King/Duke might take favorably to having a source of good armour and weapons for their troops.

Erebor Said:
"The Irish Potato famine was primarly caused by a potato disease, and the huge reliance on potatos.

TL'dr: Stop the megalomanie, think twice before commiting all our resources to a project doomed to fail."


The Irish potatoe famine had many reasons. one was the famine itself, the other was the fact that the Irish landowners hadn't enlarged infrastructure and agriculture enough to supply such a large population, let alone build up a suitable stockpile of food in case something happens. Lack of crop diversity was another reason.

Erebor Said:
"On the topic of a library. I highly doubt we'll be able to afford it. These are the medieval ages, books costed their weight of Gold, and often more. Besides, the only books you could reliably find, were the Bible, The Bible, and guess what, The Bible. This means prices for other books are highly inflated."


We need some way to draw intelligent people and scholars to our town to help us access the 'upper tier' ideas.

Erebor Said:
"Tell that to the Mongols. Anyway, longbows/recurvebows and composite bows are not mutually exclusive. You could have a composite longbow. The primaly problem, as stated earlier, is that composite bows tend to fall apart due to the high humidity."


Fair enough. Still not worth it to mess about with composite bows.


Erebor Said:
"Tl'dr:

We need to focus on the people first. It's unlikely we can rise a city from nothing, but we have to try I suppose. Or find some kind of city to steal. First things are improving agriculture, and the rest'll follow. If we want any major architectural works done, we'd need to do them now, not later."


Whilst i agree that enlarging agriculture, with more crops, better diversity and meat and dairy industries, we mustn't forget that we need other industries to earn us money.

We need to enlarge the mine, build more workshops of a whole range of professions and start growing in those areas. We cant stay a farming backwater forever.

Nope

Seriously though, I keep having to remind you guys we were going for light troops/skirmishers supported by foot archer formations. I know skirmishers aren't really as glamorous as all these other crazy ideas you guys have bouncing around, but trust me, a properly run skirmish force can be absolutely devastating to an enemy formation in preparation of a clash with regular troops, plus they complement our rangers well by also being skilled in ambush tactics. So my proposal is to crosstrain the melle troops with both spear and axe, and also have the smiths make franciscas and teach the troops to throw them. Then, we start on better bows for our archers, something along the lines of proper longbows/recurve bows(though technically recurve bows were more used in countries that were drier and had less forests, since they allowed for equivalent power with shorter bows using less wood, which isn't the case here). After that, we start with combined arms tactics on using our skirmishers and bowmen together effectively. Also, see if we can get more ranger recruits and train up the rangers more.

Also, 10ebbor, you support me right? I don't tend to have god complexes in this game...

Seriously, can people stop living in the Ancient period? Skirmishers of the likes you are talking about will get run down instantly by the light cavalry the enemy uses (and they most certainly use light cavalry). English/welsh longbowmen, Scottish bowmen and continental archers and crossbow didnt skirmish, per say. In fact, they rarely moved, instead being supported by tough melee oriented troops. Ancient style warfare went out for a reason. we will be stomped and stomped hard if we try to use outdated tactics.

There is a reason the main skirmishers in the medieval period were mounted.

Well, technically, unless we really ARE going for mounted archers, there are no real advantages to have foot archers wielding composite bows(which recurve bows technically ARE) compared to longbows. Both could shoot arrows with a similar force(the only real difference being draw weights and lengths of the bows), and composite bows take MUCH longer to make compared to longbows-plus requiring much more skilled craftsmen(while a longbow typically took about a day to make and a week to cure, a composite bow took a week to craft and MONTHS to cure to allow the glues to dry properly).

Then we will only make a few. We usually only deal in 5s and 10s. Plus we needn't give our foot archers composite bows. It's like producing super armor. Takes a while, low yield, big pay off.

Our country has NEVER seen this type of unit before or rarely uses them. It would be devastating.

you know composite bows fall apart in the rain, right?

you know we are in a fictionalised area of ENGLAND, right?

Longbows are better.

Military can't be stressed enough, and our own personal skills can't be stressed enough. Without a battle, there would be no noble house of Stone to begin with. Military is the raison d'etre.

I'm not interested in archers fighting fully from horseback, since that is a difficult skill, but there's no reason not to give all our archers and skirmishers horses. This speeds them up outside of battle at the very least, and gives them mobility on the battlefield as well. The skirmishers can actually be light cavalry of a sort, screening the deployment of our rangers and archers, who travel by horse and deploy on foot.

Archers and Rangers -- 10 man squad
Armor: Brigandine cuirass, Kettlepot helms, leather elsewhere
Arms: Longbows of a 150 lbs draw, 300 yards range, arm-strapped bucklers, and shortswords
Equipment: small fast horses, saddles with holders for longbow and three sheaves of arrows.
Skills: High draw-weight Longbow skills, Woodcraft, Trapping and Ambush, decent hand-to-hand and adequate riding skill   

Skirmishing Light Cavalry -- 5 man squad
Armor: Brigandine and chain
Arms: Spears, ten throwing axes, medium targe
Equipment: Fast light horses
Skills: Above average riding skills, combat riding training, excellent melee, throwing, and shield skill

Support and Engineering -- 1 per 10 soldiers
Armor: leather
Arms: short sword, buckler
Equipment: light horse team on light cart, 5 shovels, 5 axes, 5 10lbs hammers, and thin wooden panels and wooden stakes.
Skills: adequate teamster skills, above-average carpentry and other crafting.

Tactics: The archers are the backbone, the light cavalry skirmishes and delays any forces threatening the archers by skirmishing and harrying from the flanks as the archers rain arrows into the center mass; and the support can pass out equipment to the others and direct them in building improvised pit traps, stakes, barriers, pavises, etc. Given enough time, the force can dig in quite sturdily.

Tell me what you think.

Also, let's not visit Marna, because we want to be an ambitious young nobleman that she dreams about, not her puppydog. Writing is fine.

No. This is rediculous. Making archers our front line troops without any support? Even the English, the pre-eminent archer users in Medieval Europe had Heavily armed/armoured billmen and dismounted knights who supported the archer formations.

And throwing axes would be ineffective against the armoured enemy. they belong in the dark ages. You know, when MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T WEAR ARMOUR (unlike at the present moment ingame?).

Can people please move on from Ancient/Dark ages fighting and get into the medieval age? Throwing weapons such as axes and javeling went out of use because they were ineffective in medieval combat. Composite bows werent used by Medieval Europe (at least, in the Central/Western/Northern parts) due to the fact they were highly unsuited for the environment.

IMO it's a bad idea to spend resources to make peasant lives too good and luxurious, it's a medieval society and that's just wrong.
Even public bath is quite generous ( and unneeded, they can use river to wash...), private brick houses for everyone are just way over the roof.

Also, in this era, a big military was a way of saying "your property isn't getting destroyed on our territory" and yet we've got people saying 35 men are enough.

we have 168 citizens. So yeah, that's more than enough. Besides we are too minor to count on our forces for any serious war
Diplomacy and economy are much more important than soldiers. You guys seem to forget that. No one except me even considered looking for a wife, now we are on course on getting a nice ally


And I agree with city planning, it may be untypical for the era, but not something unrealistic

I think that the construction of a public baths Roman-style would be very beneficial. Unlike what most people believe, medieval people did try to keep clean and knew the benefits of cleanliness. the reason they weren't clean is because they didnt have the facilities to get clean properly. They thought that cleanliness was divinity as God was said to be immaculate (aka clean,pure,unsullied).

If we set up a small soap industry and built a medium sized public bath house that drew and heated water from the river then we'd make sure we can stave off disease as well as make our people happy. If we built a church next to it we could get a double whammy happiness increase.

[kahn1234]

<snip>
Double Post.

[Mlamlah]

While i agree with your summary of thrown weapons i think that you're misrepresenting the effectiveness of a guerilla force.
On the traditional field of battle ( basically, a field) guerilla forces do get annihilated, for very obvious reasons. However, the whole point of guerilla fighting is to *avoid* that kind of situation and attack when enemies are poorly prepared or at a disadvantage. The whole reason enemies met in big open fields was to facilitate very neccecarry communication in the pell mell of pitched battle. You kind of have to have officers shouting orders because most troops were poorly trained and could not be trusted to behave autonomously with any degree of battlefield sense. Geurilla forces attack while troops are marching, at night, in less favorouble terrain etc. Such tactics rely on better motivated or trained troops but prove enormously effective.
Armies that rely on such tactics have historically stomped forces far superior again and again.  The Gauls, the Gaelic people, Viking raiding parties, Napolean Bonaparte, Che Guevera and a whole crapload of ancient chinese generals could be looked upon to see that these tactics have proven effective in the past, in a great variety of levels of technology.
In fact, that's basically what a good portion of modern warfare has become, highly trained and disciplined geurilla forces fighting against eachother.

[kahn1234]

While i agree with your summary of thrown weapons i think that you're misrepresenting the effectiveness of a guerilla force.
On the traditional field of battle ( basically, a field) guerilla forces do get annihilated, for very obvious reasons. However, the whole point of guerilla fighting is to *avoid* that kind of situation and attack when enemies are poorly prepared or at a disadvantage. The whole reason enemies met in big open fields was to facilitate very neccecarry communication in the pell mell of pitched battle. You kind of have to have officers shouting orders because most troops were poorly trained and could not be trusted to behave autonomously with any degree of battlefield sense. Geurilla forces attack while troops are marching, at night, in less favorouble terrain etc. Such tactics rely on better motivated or trained troops but prove enormously effective.
Armies that rely on such tactics have historically stomped forces far superior again and again.  The Gauls, the Gaelic people, Viking raiding parties, Napolean Bonaparte, Che Guevera and a whole crapload of ancient chinese generals could be looked upon to see that these tactics have proven effective in the past, in a great variety of levels of technology.
In fact, that's basically what a good portion of modern warfare has become, highly trained and disciplined geurilla forces fighting against eachother.

Whilst i agree with the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare (and i dont agree with your statement that most troops in medieval troops were badly trained (they were usually trained pretty damn well, or were using skills which they honed other ways eg Archery)) we dont have enough troops to operate independently, we dont have enough troops to effectively fight a guerrilla war (lots of smaller squads making up a large numbers of troops striking at a large number of areas simultaneously etc) and it could be seen as dishonourable by other more traditional troops.

[kaian-a-coel]

The whole point of guerrilla warfare is to counter the fact that you DO NOT have enough troops. If you have enough, why bother? Straight-on punch-em-in-the-face-with-spikes is less complicated.

[Gervassen]

Public planning of housing was not uncommon back then, especially in large cities where there's not much place, or after disasters.

Let's delegate this to the town council. We're a lord, not a bureaucrat, and it kinda feels the opposite right now. We can ask the council to meet with the local tax-payers and raise the possibility of building a public bath, or a public school, or subsidized stone housing for tax-payers of three years standing.

But, yeah, the mews are non-negotiable. Have to build them.

Let's spend some time of our lance skill.

No. This is rediculous. Making archers our front line troops without any support? Even the English, the pre-eminent archer users in Medieval Europe had Heavily armed/armoured billmen and dismounted knights who supported the archer formations.

And throwing axes would be ineffective against the armoured enemy. they belong in the dark ages. You know, when MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T WEAR ARMOUR (unlike at the present moment ingame?).

Our front-line troops are... other people's infantry. The reason I want all these troops mounted is because we don't have front-line troops. I want them able to deploy quickly to the flanks of our allies and then evade any attacks launched against themselves rather than at the front-line of our allies.

The axes aren't my idea--just incorporating tryrar's francisca--but considering how few of the infantry are actually armored, I doubt axes are ineffective.

[kaian-a-coel]

Public planning of housing was not uncommon back then, especially in large cities where there's not much place, or after disasters.

Let's delegate this to the town council. We're a lord, not a bureaucrat, and it kinda feels the opposite right now. We can ask the council to meet with the local tax-payers and raise the possibility of building a public bath, or a public school, or subsidized stone housing for tax-payers of three years standing.

Yeah, delegating is probably good, but acting all lordy is not something we should do. We were a peasant up until four years ago, remember.

Our front-line troops are... other people's infantry. The reason I want all these troops mounted is because we don't have front-line troops. I want them able to deploy quickly to the flanks of our allies and then evade any attacks launched against themselves rather than at the front-line of our allies.

This. We are a vassal, our troops will seldom fight by themselves, or dare I say never.

[kahn1234]

Public planning of housing was not uncommon back then, especially in large cities where there's not much place, or after disasters.

Let's delegate this to the town council. We're a lord, not a bureaucrat, and it kinda feels the opposite right now. We can ask the council to meet with the local tax-payers and raise the possibility of building a public bath, or a public school, or subsidized stone housing for tax-payers of three years standing.

But, yeah, the mews are non-negotiable. Have to build them.

Let's spend some time of our lance skill.

No. This is rediculous. Making archers our front line troops without any support? Even the English, the pre-eminent archer users in Medieval Europe had Heavily armed/armoured billmen and dismounted knights who supported the archer formations.

And throwing axes would be ineffective against the armoured enemy. they belong in the dark ages. You know, when MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T WEAR ARMOUR (unlike at the present moment ingame?).

Our front-line troops are... other people's infantry. The reason I want all these troops mounted is because we don't have front-line troops. I want them able to deploy quickly to the flanks of our allies and then evade any attacks launched against themselves rather than at the front-line of our allies.

The axes aren't my idea--just incorporating tryrar's francisca--but considering how few of the infantry are actually armored, I doubt axes are ineffective.

1) What do we do when/if we are on our own? we'd be fucked.
2) Most of the enemy we have fought have had at the very least mail armour, brigandine or some other basic armour type. And we do NOT know what type of enemies we'll be facing in the future. By the looks of it we may be fighting Counts and their troops in the future. They will most likely have at the very least the armour our troops have now, if not heavy mail/ heavy brigandine or partial plate.

3) The francisca belongs in the ancient period. keep it there.

[10ebbor10]

If we're alone, we should be fighting from behind at least decent fortifications. (Also, an army of 35 people, we'd be in trouble in any situation without support).