Duchy Recruitment Discussion

[Grayford]

I know suggesting that we can recruit away from the capital is a forbidden topic, but I feel BM has changed to the point where we should discuss it a bit again. A believe a shift from being realm based to duchy base in RP and game mechanics brings justification to allow some discussion on this age old feature rejection.

Duchies are more important as ever and it seems they are only going to get stronger. I believe this not only reflects a more fun gameplay but also aligns historically as a country was really just a collection of dukes and duchies and a king nearly united them.

So I believe recruiting away from the capital, and instead in the city of ones duchy makes mor sense. It's not as drastic as being able to recruit anywhere and armies would still have to return to their duchy city to recruit. They would also only have RCs intheir duchy available.

Gameplay wise it would obviously have quite a few changes. Cities would hold out better and longer. Some duchy armies would recover much faster. It allows for some abuse because duchies closer to the frontlines would get all the warriors as knights while rear duchies all the courtiers. But I believe these would help gameplay as it would lead to more battles, require better logistics between multiple armies, and allow cities to be taken less frequently; requiring better planned campaigns, coalition armies, and the use of less convientianal tactics (diplomatic treachery, sabotage, etc.)

Thoughts?

[Norrel]

So I believe recruiting away from the capital, and instead in the city of ones duchy makes mor sense. It's not as drastic as being able to recruit anywhere and armies would still have to return to their duchy city to recruit. They would also only have RCs intheir duchy available.

Duchies don't even need to have cities anymore.

[Indirik]

As slapstick says, duchies are no longer tied to cities. It is possible for a duchy to have nothing but rural regions, or to have 3 or 4 cities. How would you handle those cases?

How would you handle a realm stuffing everything into one duchy? Or regions swapping duchies based on the current recruiting needs?

[Penchant]

Well instead of ducal based it could be army based because the sponsor makes the army in a region so wherever the sponsor makes the army HQ at the beginning is where everyone in that army can also recruit from.

[Grayford]

Perhaps the duke must appoint a city/stronghold in the duchy to at as a muster point for recruitment (in the case of multiple cities). The need for a city or stronghold to recruit makes duchies without one need to merge with ones that do.

solidifying the allegiance system and making repercussions for switching duchies and lords without good cause can help solve some of the abuse problems. Perhaps you could also work into the mix that the number of recruits a RC gets daily is based on the distance between the muster point and home region. Greater distance, slow recruits get there thus less there are available daily. Perhaps add equipment damage upon recruitment too.

[Indirik]

@penchant: the realm capital is an option for the army home. People could choose that, and the result is no change. And what if the army's home region is not in the duchy at all? What if the duchy has multiple armies homed in multiple regions, where do the recruits go?

@ grayford: I'm not liking the whole slowing down thing. We are trying to speed up the game, not slow it down. Also, we don't want to control the game through penalties, but through positive incentives.

Also: " solidifying the allegiance system and making repercussions for switching duchies and lords without good cause can help solve some of the abuse problems." Explain how you would do these.  How do you solidify the allegiance system? What kind of repercussions? What constitutes a "good cause"?

[Penchant]

@penchant: the realm capital is an option for the army home. People could choose that, and the result is no change. And what if the army's home region is not in the duchy at all? What if the duchy has multiple armies homed in multiple regions, where do the recruits go?

When I say army based I mean everyone in the army can recruit from the army home as in it has nothing to do with what duchy you are in and if recruiting was limited to certain RCs for the army home you could have the limitation be all rcs of lords in the army supply troops to the army home though I would like the option to be able to continue recruiting at the capital so I don't know about the distrubution of troops to army and capital would work. Also if they choose the realm capital then it was their choice and there is nothing wrong with there being no change for them.

[Zakilevo]

Why not let people choose duchy capitals and let people recruit units from those capitals.

Limit RCs so people can only recruit all types of units from the capital while a duchy capital only offer RCs from regions under the duchy. Also exclude SFs and Cav too.

[Indirik]

@penchant: this discussion is about duchy-based recruiting. If you want to discuss army-based, please start a new thread.

[Kellaine]

being able to recruit in each duchy seems to me to be more realistic.

[Indirik]

The idea of being able to recruit both in the capital *and* in the duchy seems to be too much of an advantage. Also, how do you separate which recruits are where? The SF/Cav in the capitol only doesn't really make much sense, I think. Why would it be that way?

Introducing duchy capitols seems to be a step backward. It also opens up a lot of potential for abuse, or accusations of such. I don't think I've ever seen a capitol move that someone didn't cry foul about.

[Scarlett]

To do this right you'd have to re-think how BM handles RCs in the first place. The "recruitment center" in BM is a gameplay contrivance -- a very useful one, of course, but as a device it doesn't translate too well to medieval armies. It doesn't have to, but a model that "fits" the new Duchy/region setup would probably be starting from scratch.

In "real life," a knight or lord would recruit one of two ways: a levy from his or her land, or mercenaries. The way Crusader Kings 2 models this is an accurate simplification: the landholder can always recruit the most men (the lord or knight showing up and raising men from families he's nominally familiar with) while each higher tier could recruit a smaller amount from land beneath him -- so a Knight of Anacan can recruit the greatest number of men from his own estates, while the Margrave of Anacan can recruit the same from his estates plus a lesser number from other estates in Anacan, while the Duke of Anacan can recruit a smaller number still from all the regions in Anacan, and the King can recruit a smaller number still from any region in the realm.

A levy would only hang around for so long, though. One season, historically, or "one campaign" perhaps in BM terms. This doesn't address the type of soldiers you'd get, either; if I had to design something to fit BM's model I'd say that each region could choose either a balanced approach (everybody can recruit every type of unit) or a specialized approach, and the more an individual region specializes (e.g. the less availability of other units) the better those specialized units are. This isn't so much a "construct an archer building" implementation as it's a cultural and military emphasis, which is where such specialization came from anyway: you had your Welsh archers, your French knights, your Scottish heavy infantry, English billmen, continental pikemen, and so on. It'd take time and gold to change a region's focus and you could even add a "neighbor factor" where you'd get even better dudes if the whole Duchy specialized....but then you might have pretty terrible cavalry if you lost that Duchy.

The Recruitment Center model really works best when it's limited to the capital though.

[Grayford]

@indIrik The slowing down penalties and adding equipment damage was  suggested to deter realms away from creating one massive duchy to recruit close to te frontlines. Those penelties would only be experienced if the regions were farther away from the duchy 'capital'. I would think that this would speed up the game not slow it down.

As for the allegiance system I thought it was already being worked on. But I suppose having honor/prestige hits for changing oaths (minimizing frequent oath changers) and region stats getting accustomed to what duchy, lord, and knights it has ( making it easier to maintain with the less changes you make/ peasants developing a relationship with their lord/knights/duchy)

[Charles]

I think this idea would fit in well with the discussion that occured a while ago about new posibilities for estates.  Placing RCs into estates rather than regions, would help make some of these ideas work well, and make sense.

[JPierreD]

I'm of the opinion that this idea could have fitted in the old system, but it does not on the new one. Too many abuse possibilities for little real gain.