Allow marshals/generals to see number of siege engines in their army

[vonGenf]

It hardly seems worth modifying the inalienable rights to allow someone to carry their desired number of banners.

"It is my inalienable right to carry five banners, if I so choose!"

Are we going to start asking the Titans to bolt people for asking someone to go buy another siege engine? That seems... harsh.

It's not a question of right, it's a question of culture. It's ok when it happens once. What I don't like are these places were copypasting a weekly copy of your unit's stats is considered a normal administrative duty. This encourages that culture.

[Velax]

This.  A total for the entire army seems like a much better (and realistic) compromise.

It's not really a compromise, because that was the original proposal.

[Indirik]

This.  A total for the entire army seems like a much better (and realistic) compromise.

Only marginally more useful than not knowing at all, if you don't know *where* those siege engines are. Since not every nobles follows the army *every* time it goes marching, how will you know if those siege engines you see on the army report are actually with the army? Are they getting ready to attack your enemy's capital, or are half of them still sitting around in your own capital with the nobles that have gone on walkabout this week?

The Marshal needs to know, so... You'll ask the nobles in the army to report the number of siege engines they have, just like we already do. So you haven't really gained too much. Or you'll just take the risk that the 40 SEs you see on the army status screen are really with you, and hope that 27 of them are still sitting at home.

[Tom]

My words on this:

   
• It is the marshals (but not the generals) job to know the capabilities of his army. I think that includes paraphernalia, or at least some of them. Siege engines are important. Scouts make you able to move around in enemy territory without being blind. Number of healers correlates to how long you can stay in the field fighting before you are wiped out. Banners keep morale up, also meaning you can fight more battles.
• To combat micro-management, I agree that total sums would probably be a great compromise.
• To make it more meaningful, a few statistics would help, such as not only the number of siege engines, but also the ratio of SEs to men and/or the ratio of SE to infantry soldiers, the ratio of healers to men, etc. Such statistics would also make macro-management easier - e.g. "hey people, I think we should have 1 healer per 20 men, I noticed we are down to 1 per 30, some of you probably need to hire another healer or two, please check your unit."

I support adding these numbers to the army report for the marshal.

[Tom]

Only marginally more useful than not knowing at all, if you don't know *where* those siege engines are. Since not every nobles follows the army *every* time it goes marching, how will you know if those siege engines you see on the army report are actually with the army? Are they getting ready to attack your enemy's capital, or are half of them still sitting around in your own capital with the nobles that have gone on walkabout this week?

If your army isn't marching together, you have your army setup messed up. Most likely you have too many too big armies. But I agree that this is in part because the lords need to assign their knights and their reaction times are probably too long to allow for dynamic armies.

[Indirik]

It's not a question of right, it's a question of culture. It's ok when it happens once. What I don't like are these places were copypasting a weekly copy of your unit's stats is considered a normal administrative duty. This encourages that culture.

I hate it when people ask for that sort of thing, or when people do it on their own. And I routinely ignore any such nonsense of people asking me to do it.

But, honestly, this seems to me to avoid that kind of junk. If Marshals can see how many SEs are with the army, they won't *have* to ask for that crap. They'll already know. And if you want to carry 3 SEs instead of 4, then do it. And if your marshal asks you to carry 4 instead of 3, then you can either go get another, or tell him "No thanks, 3 is enough for me."

And if he pushes it, tell him that your unit is your own responsibility, and he should sod off.

And if he still pushes it, then don't put up with his crap. Ask your liege to put you in a different army. Or go find a realm where your nobility is respected.

People need to stand up for themselves and their rights. Stop /letting/ people micromanage you.

[Indirik]

If your army isn't marching together, you have your army setup messed up. Most likely you have too many too big armies. But I agree that this is in part because the lords need to assign their knights and their reaction times are probably too long to allow for dynamic armies.

It could be either of those. People don't like continually having to reassign knights to new armies. Sometimes people take vacations, or get busy, and don't march on a specific campaign. Are we going to ask them to have themselves removed from their army because of it? And then when they get back, have them moved back into the army? And what about people who fall behind in the march, for whatever reason? Any army that stays in the field for a significant length of time will generally have a significant number of stragglers. Those are significant.

If you don't want to add individual displays of SEs for all nobles in the army, then how about some kind of regional status ability for Marshal/Vice Marshals? Give the Marshal a button to click to get an army report for the status of his army in the region he is currently in. So if he's in Brive about to attack Partora, he can get the "Brive Status Report" that shows all the stats for his army, but *only* includes Brive. Then you can abstract the numbers of SEs, but still give location-dependent summaries.

[Tom]

If you don't want to add individual displays of SEs for all nobles in the army, then how about some kind of regional status ability for Marshal/Vice Marshals?

Yeah, something like that. Maybe an automatic list that includes only people within 1 region of the marshal himself.

People need to stand up for themselves and their rights. Stop /letting/ people micromanage you.

Totally, but what we need for that is much better unit code. When units actually work differently, micro-managing will be dead. If your unit actually works best with X banners instead of the marshal's preferred Y, then you have a reason to stand up for your rights.

[Andrew]

Totally, but what we need for that is much better unit code. When units actually work differently, micro-managing will be dead. If your unit actually works best with X banners instead of the marshal's preferred Y, then you have a reason to stand up for your rights.

I am fully in support of anything that adds uniqueness to individual nobles and thier units.  Those commoners may all look alike, but that doesn't mean that they really are.

[Velax]

So any word on this? Tom liked it, so I'm hoping it's in the pipeline somewhere.

[GoldPanda]

I'd settle for being able to see every army's details again.  :'(

[Perth]

I am all for anything that makes the Marshal's job easier, because its the hardest job in the game. However, I'm not sure if this makes it easier, or just requires more micro-managing on his part.

[Velax]

How does it require more micro-managing? Currently you have to ask everyone in the army to report how many siege engines they have, and if your armies are anything like mine, you end up having to send out individual messages asking people to respond. With this feature you look at the Army Information page and you have your answer.

Recently there was a situation where I told the army to get siege engines. I noticed the number available was going down so assumed people were buying them. I asked who had them, but no one answered. A week later and we're looking at assaulting some fortifications, so I ask again who has them. No one answers so I send out messages to each individual lord with infantry. Turns out the whole army had only 3 engines. No idea what the hell happened to the 15-20 we should have had, but if I'd been able to find at a glance how many we had, it would have saved me a good 2 hours of worrying and !@#$ing around.

[Perth]

How does it require more micro-managing?

Perhaps I should have said that it might further incentivize micro-managment, not necessarily require it. As it is now, you only need to worry yourself over how many siege engines each noble is carrying if you really want to and want to go out of your way to do so. However, once those little numbers are there for you to see, all of sudden there isn't much excuse to not be harassing all those troop leaders who aren't up to par with what you want.

There are pro's and con's to both ways. I just think that giving the Marshal that information might all of sudden shift the burden of responsibility from troop leader to Marshal. "Marshal, you could see Noble X, Y and Z didn't have siege engines before the battle, why didn't you fix that?"

[Gustav Kuriga]

Perhaps I should have said that it might further incentivize micro-managment, not necessarily require it. As it is now, you only need to worry yourself over how many siege engines each noble is carrying if you really want to and want to go out of your way to do so. However, once those little numbers are there for you to see, all of sudden there isn't much excuse to not be harassing all those troop leaders who aren't up to par with what you want.

There are pro's and con's to both ways. I just think that giving the Marshal that information might all of sudden shift the burden of responsibility from troop leader to Marshal. "Marshal, you could see Noble X, Y and Z didn't have siege engines before the battle, why didn't you fix that?"

Easy fix for that, don't give the marshal ability to see each individual noble's number of siege engines, just the total for the entire army.