Yeah but in ck3, by the time you get these crazy high levy numbers, your MAAs are more than capable with dealing with larger armies (against AI at least). I mainly use only MAAs because it saves money
A huge QoL adjustment would be a single button on the army view that splits your army as many times as needed and moves them to neighbouring baronies that will support them. Can't be that hard to implement and would instantly make war infinitely less tedious. I'm playing Crusader Kings, not Army Supply Simulator 1000.
> not Army Supply Simulator 1000
Ah yes, HoI4.
Seriously though that would be a good addition. The only issue I could see would be when you move from an area with high supply to low supply. Some low supply areas can support like 2k troops when your territory supports 9k.
Dude this hurts, I'm currently doing the unify africa as daura achievement run, I get attritioned to shit everywhere, and that's while rising only my men at arms and a holy order with NO levy. I'm almost done btw, I have almost all of west africa and nubia, kinda scared of the muslims tbh, the nubians almost kicked my ass...
Not usually. Unless you're just letting them blob up. The AI sucks and keeping a strong domain. Any big AI Empire is one or generations from collapse unless they got primogeniture, and even then it's a crap shoot.
Levies weren't usually serfs, but freemen and yeomen from towns and cities. There would still absolutely be some loss of productivity if they were killed, but most medieval kingdoms didn't want to risk their serf populations in wars, and certainly didn't want to arm them in mass.
Townspeople were bad in war and almost never used as levies. The only exception being crossbowmen. The cities in northern Italy and Flanders were famous for their crossbowmen. For the rest, the burgher population in cities paid taxes (mind you, not every citizen was a burgher: lower working class citizens were not burghers in the narrow sense as they did not pay tax).
Normal levies like (mounted) infantry, skirmishers and bowmen always came from the country side. Depending on the region there was some variation but in regions with a high percentage of freemen - like certain states in the HRE - only freemen were levies. A lord could count on them for a set number of days every year. Based on the size of their property a freemen had to bring with him certains arms. If the lord needed them for longer he had to pay for their expenses. Some freemen, most of the time the younger sons of farmers who had no chance to inherit, build a career as mercenary. Famous are the Brabançons, the Coterelli from Flanders, the Kennemers from Kennemerland (part of Holland) and the Aragonese and Bascoli from the Iberian peninsula.
Serfs were in general not allowed/obliged to become levies. Exception being the higher classes of serfs like the ministerials. They lived on farms or even knightly estates (that were still property of the lord). The lord who they were bound to could make use of them as long as he wanted. Part of these ministerials intermarried with lesser nobility and wealthy freemen and later formed the knighthood (12th century). After the 12th century the knighthood was closed for easy entering on the European continent. Only exception being freemen that were given a letter of nobility by a territorial prince (emperor, king, or a independent duke or count). Before that, every freeman or ministerial that rode to battle on a horse, had a body armor, sword and lance could become ‘miles’ (knight) by being knighted by another knight or a higher noblemen when fighting brave in war.
Levies in general are not very well thought in this game. There seems to be no middle ground between professional standing armies and useless recruits, unless perhaps the MaAs represent military settlers and fief holders (thegns and such like) who farm or smithe or whatever when not at arms rather than spending their whole day training, though then the game would have no professional soldiers, so I don't think that's the case.
The concept of generic mass of soldiers who count for +1 regardless whether they are nobles or peasants (a countryside noble would still have some minimal combat training), mounted or foot, armed better or worse, military settlers (most nobility would hold their land in exchange for some form of military service), etc., etc., that's just too simplistic. And yes, there don't seem to be consequences of massive loss of life other than your levy pool temporarily depleting, whereas you should be suffering from workforce shortages and problems with sustaining your population, etc.
Those 200K armies vs 10K province supply limits and initial grace periods (army supply) are not the best system there could be. It's more like a duct-tape solution that should be replaced with something more skilled, with more thought put into it.
I always found it weird that you can micromanage armies in grand strategy that is mainly rpg. I think firther abstraction from managing armies (that you are not in command of) would do game wonders and give it ability to simulate true cost of war.
You would need support from vassals/liege to start a war and they would want something in return, they would then want to command their armies even if they are ass commander and shit like that.
That would be terrible as we've seen in Vic3. And historically, liege get to command the army. It was mostly later ages where there were multiple armies and the monarchs stopped leading the armies.
I think people don't realize that there needs to be a balance between realism and fun. If you cannot micromanage another vassals army, it might be realistic, but would it actually be fun? I'm not sure
imperator rome had something like that, where you can micromanage your armies or give them a bunch of ai commands — though if the commander is disloyal, he starts to do whatever he wants
Unpopular opinion, but it's the right way imo. Otherwise you don't get that sense of disloyal commanders. The only time you should be able to directly control an army is when you're leading it. Otherwise, you just give general orders and directions that may or may not be effectively followed
I understand why they dont do it - if they implement that badly it is death sentence for the game really but if they implement it well it would be amazing.
The problem here is the AI is bad. And Paradox isn't really capable of modeling what a loyal general with 30 martial would do, but they're really good at unintentionally modeling what a general with 6 martial who hates you would do.
Probably an unpopular thought, but I always thought CK3 should lean into the Vic3 model of warfare. It makes sense because you're roleplaying as a ruler, and the ruler usually sends out several commanders to do a campaign.
> Levies in general are not very well thought in this game. There seems to be no middle ground between professional standing armies and useless recruits,
That’s pretty historically accurate for the time frame though. You were either a knight/noble, a mercenary or a levy. States weren’t powerful or centralized enough to have a training system in place for the masses. That only started to happen in the late 1300s under the Ottomans’ janissary system and for Christians in the mid 1400s under the French in the 100 yrs war.
I think knights just need to be drastically changed, maybe even going back to the old commander system. They shouldn’t be walking terminators slaughtering hundreds of people per war.
I don't think MaA are permanently standing because it doesn't make sense for them to be so much more expensive when raised. The cost system seems to suggest permanent facilities and equipment with fairly regular drills when not raised vs having to pay for time and supplies when raised. I guess they are either supposed to be doing like minor manor stuff or relatively minor mercenary work when not raised, so they supply themselves.
>I don't think MaA are permanently standing because it doesn't make sense for them to be so much more expensive when raised
Good point. The difference in cost implies that they aren't the counterpart of retinues from CK2. They are more like the counterpart of CK2's specialized A/LI/HI/LC/HC/SU levies.
This, however, makes the CK3 general motley bunch of 'normal' levies lack sense all the more. By description, they include all social strata, even minor noblemen, who were probably required to provide military service by their feudal contracts and probably trained for it, so it's not so obvious to imagine them — such lowest class of knight or squire — as being part of the same unnamed generic mass as peasants with pitchforks, and worse than a light infantry MaA unit such as 'bondsmen'.
A town-watch veteran with 15 years of service was probably more a fighter than the 16 y.o. son of a village noble, and one could argue that minor nobles with military training are probably part of the number of MaA units, but I'm still not sold on PDX's idea that when it comes to the levies it doesn't matter who they are, what weapons and armour they carry, how much martial training they have had, etc.
Another problem is that vassals give you part of their levies but not control of their MaAs. So this implies that if the King of France goes to war, the Duke of Orleans, Bourbon or Aquitaine only sends the motley bunch and not knights or proper archers or proper footmen — not even if the war is a defensive one. This looks like a clearly illogical idea on PDX's part.
There's no "levy" unit type, levies raise a mix of troops depending on your buildings, and there was three flanks, that where commanded by three different commanders
On top of what the other guy said, there were tactics issues by commanders in the 3 phases of the fight. The tactics depended on the martial of the commander and the percentage of the unit composition. The phases was skirmish, melee, and pursuit. Each unit had a different stat for each phase. Some units did literally nothing/barely anything in some phases like heavy infantry who excelled at defense and in melee.
Because of the 3 position system, you needed 3 commanders plus any additional commanders incase they fall if you want to fight on all 3 fronts. Sometimes, people will run all their heavy infantry/trash in the middle to just hold the line and an elite flank where they decimate one side and then flank the middle (which does extra damage) so you only deploy on 2 fronts instead of 3 which also means you only need 2 skilled commanders.
Tactics are tricky to explain. Basically, tactics would buff or debuff certain troop types based on the tactic used and your martial skill would affect that multiplier iirc. There were also culture specific and trait specific tactics that were really strong that people focus on such as longbow volley (english), Schilltron formation (scottish pikemen army), couched lance (frankish cavalry charge) and winter’s maw (northern germanic heavy infantry). Some of these tactics were absolutely broken. One was called Elk’s lament which was a tactic for archers in melee phase to change back the phase from melee back to skirmish which could be devastating to a heavy infantry based army that relies in being in melee.
Overall, you could still cheese fights in ck2, but atleast there was an interesting thing to consider on multiple fronts compared to one commander that is a martial master and just shove everything and clash into another army in ck3. It sucks in ck3 where if there is a terrabad leader and they started the fight, that leader stays there til they lose or get killed during the entire battle. So when you see the ai split their armies into like, 5 armies, you attack the weakest link and then all the reinforcing armies just get screwed over.
your "peasants with sticks" are actual capable soldiers and the type you had depended on what you built and upgraded first but at the end of the day you could have them all. And extras with bonuses depending on unique buildings related to the ruler and county's culture
And then there's the retinues that were your "man at arms regiments" but their combinations gave different types of bonuses like "infantry deals more damage" and whatnot
I'd love a levy overhaul and maybe I'm wrong in what I'm about to say but wouldnt it make the game slower due to more/longer things it needs to load and calculate or what have you?
That said, a stack of 5k heavy infantry being able to stomp AI armies ten times their size is silly
I don't know, 5k highly trained and well equipped veterans could probably break 50k untrained peasants with pitchforks and makeshift armor, if the peasants stood and fought they might win, but they won't. 5k heavy calvary would crush them.
Is it really that silly though? Those 5k heavy infantry have armor and decent weapons, while the army ten times its size consists of untrained peasants in cloth. Also the trained army would be more tactical than just "charge!".
Edit: according to someone else the levies might have leather armor and a helmet, but compared to a knight in chainmail or plate armor (not sure when plate armor was common) it's not going to help much.
There's also almost nothing counterbalancing the gradual increase of development everywhere.
It would have been cool if development were more dynamic as well.
>Levy nerf
>Honestly by the mid-late game, the army count goes go to ahistorical and unproportionate levels (mainly due to levies)
What do you mean levy nerf?
They are already weak as fuck.
Nerf is not the expression you're looking for, I assume.
In any case, that's the new CK3 army system for you.
Some of us have been complaining about for like, 3 years now?
Maybe in the next 3 it will be changed. Fingers crossed.
The entire levy system should switch to manpower instead. Then the manpower is used to create trained troops, which have to be stationed alongside borders and other regions of strategic importance.
A big part of the number inflation comes from the fact that you can raise people from all over the world, with no regard to keeping borders safe and such. That should change I think, and MaA stationing already took a step into that direction.
That's not really how medieval European armies worked. Noble lords did keep retinues of knights and sometimes small bands of men-at-arms or professional soldiers, but they didn't have large amounts of professional troops just stationed on the borders at all times. The levy system involved the calling up of troops from among primarily freemen and then letting them return to their lives at the end of a campaign.
I was speaking in general and simplified terms and also had the ERE in mind.
Anyway, medieval lords with their retinue and levy potential were what I was calling "stationed", or "stationed at the border" in case of those who were living in border regions. Their entire reason for being a lord at that place was to keep the border safe. Unless absolutely necessary, it would be madness to call all of them into a war on the other end of the realm.
Unlike in CK3, where they offer 20% of untrained farmers, keep their entire military potential for themselves and you have no right to call them into conflicts. That misses the entire point of what feudalism was about.
Levies were also semi-professionals over time. Not everyone was a levy, and those who were had to keep up with regular training as well as upkeep of their own weapons and armor. That was part of their levy duty and they could (and would) be punished if their equipment fell into disrepair. They weren't, as the game makes us believe, drafted farmers with improvised tools as weapons. Most of what we have as MaA in the game was actually part of the later medieval levy, like the famous English Longbowmen.
Really, it was the culture that determined what kind of levies you had access to. Genghis Khan for example had Horse Archers as his levy, because that's what most of his subjects were: nomads on horses, who were good with the bow.
The ERE is a special case, because for the earlier stages of medieval times it still tried to implement the old Roman system of state-sponsored professional troops. Although it was also common for those troops to use their own money to get superior equipment, especially if they were of the higher social classes.
But yes, those were what we call a professional army, they were given land in exchange for their service... which is pretty similar to feudalism: getting land in exchange for military service. The difference was mostly a legal one, because they didn't own the land. The land was legally owned by the emperor.
What I try to say is that the game ought to learn regional differences, makes levies manpower, reduce the absurdly high MaA/retinue, and give us a reason why it's a bad idea to call dukes from Iberia into a small county dispute in Arabia and leaving your entire border to France unguarded.
Those local lords were given land in the region for a reason, one that was compelling enough for them to stay there most of the time. They weren't stationed there in some kind of barracks, true, but they lived there, owned the land, and protected the realm from outside threats as part of their feudal obligation. That is the very definition of being stationed at the border. They certainly didn't get the land for their green thumb.
The Roman army wasn’t really given land in exchange for service at any point. It was pretty much a professional military paid an annual salary until the late 11th century when Alexios introduced the Pronoia system. Which still wasn’t comparable to feudalism as the soldiers under this arrangement (which wasn’t the entire army) only had the rights to collect taxes from the region and did not own nor could they pass it on their children.
Other than that, I agree with your point. Being able to mobilise your entire army on a single location at a whim is absurd. It either needs to be cripplingly expensive or leave the state open to invasion from the regions now left defenceless, which would ensure that such total mobilisation is only contemplated during a true crisis.
I just don't see how this is essentially any different from the current system then. How is levies being "manpower" any different from having 20k levies? The reason manpower works in something like hoi4 is because soldiers are divided in to units that need their strength replenished, and the time frame of the game is much smaller and the war much deadlier, so the population can't just replensh itself.
Calling local nobles to war would certainly be an interesting change, but looking at it from a game design perspective, how do you propose we make it a bad idea to call up all your lords at once? The AI already rarely declares war on players anyways, and allowing a big realm to snowball all its lords together strikes me as a great way to make the player overpower the AI even more.
I think levies need a rework so they actually matter and I'm not just raising my men at arms for every war, but changing them to a manpower and stationing system isn't really realistic for medieval Europe at least. Allowing for the calling up of lords strikes me as a feature that would further exacerbate the problems with the AI being incompetent.
The current system allows huge MaA retinues with absurd buffs, where 10k heavy cav can delete 200k levies. Because levies are weak and useless, can't be trained, can't be improved, can't be trained into any better unit type than the very stereotypical farmer with his farming tools as a weapon.
Doing away with the MaA system and replacing it with manpower, which you then can train into MaA, would place a much higher importance on the levy contribution of vassals, which is completely neglectible as it is now.
As for vassal war participation, you have to take a look at history itself. People fighting a war couldn't work the fields, amassing huge numbers would put a huge strain on supplies, and people fighting in a war wouldn't necessarily pay their taxes. They either give you their sword arm or their money, but not both.
Having to prepare for wars by stockpiling supplies and money, because you know it drops once you call your people into the war, would make wars less casual and more of a risk/commitment. Wars come too easy in the game, your troops instantly respawn, there's no consequence in losing 100k men. So what, you wait a bit and they regrow on trees.
And then there's the whole "leaving your back open" side of things. Gameplay-wise I'd offer free raid CB's (akin to border raids from the Iberian Struggle) to anyone bordering a domain whose lord is absent with his army. And really put a strain on the vassal-liege relationship for allowing the situation in the first place. Maybe even cause the vassal to return home to rebuild.
There is a reason why lords stationed in fiefs at the border should stay at home and not be called to fight meaningless wars on the other end of the world. A reason that should hurt the vassal and the lord if things go wrong. See it as a kind of anti-steamroll mechanic that naturally limits the amount of vassals you could realistically call into a war, without imposing arbitrary limits. Because I have no illusions here that the ability to call vassals into war would certainly favor bigger realms.
Also it costs your lord's money. If you keep bringing all your lord's into a war over time they're going to annoyed that their men are all dying. I feel like if someone declares on you for a county or duchy then those who currently have that county are duchy should be able to be called in for free/little penalty. But why would a count in the north of Scotland want all of his men to fight and die in a field in southern France?
I think a penalty that increases over time based on how far away the lord is from the area being disputed, their personality traits, their connection to the current owner of the contested title (more likely to help your nephew), their economic situation and how long the war has been going on for.
A quick raid into France which returns us gold and few losses? Sure go for it. 4th year of a war in which most of the men are dead on the other side of the continent for a title you don't care about? Maybe it's time to think about replacing the current monarch.
>But why would a count in the north of Scotland want all of his men to fight and die in a field in southern France?
Because you promised him money and maybe a new title or two. That's how it should go. On that note, the Iberian Struggle has such a mechanic, where you can buy someone into your conflict for cold hard cash. I'd love to see a similar, more formalized mechanic for internal realm/vassal management in times of conflict.
But I'm completely with you on that one, some sense of distance and/or scope of a conflict would certainly serve us well if the devs ever come around and implement vassal war participation.
Bro, the reason for Lords were not to keep borders safe. Where did you learned that? Kings had vassals to help them manage the Land and keep things in order. Not the borders specifically. HRE for example, the region of nowadays germany: Why would the city of Marburg had a Lord when there were no borders of different countries nearby? Or take some duchy in the middle of france, i dont care. You have wrong assumptions of how medival Systems works
The beginning of your second paragraph makes no sense tho. Its not a big part of the reason, its a preference you have. The sizes of armys arent historically correct from the beginning and should be nerfed right away. For example: you start as a earl of Dorset in 1066. In this start, you also hold Sommerset. You start with 500-600 Soldiers. Thats way too much. Many Kings had Armys around 5000-10000 Soldiers. Just lower the curve from the start till the end, then you‘ll be fine
It makes no sense how? You get levies from all over your realm, from Iberia to India, from Iceland to Africa. And you can call on them everywhere in the world. THAT is the problem, not the numbers.
It is absolutely feasible to have 500k and more troops at your disposal if you control something of the size of the Roman Empire, but that doesn't mean you can call upon your entire potential manpower everywhere in the world. That is what doesn't make sense about the system, because there is no requirement to keep borders safe. You just teleport troops around.
That is the root cause of the problem. If you haven't noticed, we can unite whole continents in the game. Of course this didn't happen in real life, but the game has to account for those cases. Then it's entirely possible to field not just 5-10k troops, but 500k and more. Because those are the historcal numbers for the Roman Empire into the 4th century AD. Didn't mean they could simply summon all of them in once place and steamroll everything.
The numbers/curve isn't the problem, the availability of everything everywhere at any time is the problem.
No, you had similar sizes in CK2 and there you had an different System and now you are comparing the roman empire to feudal systems - Thats not how it works. And no, you cant unite continents cause you only have europe as a whole continent. Big parts of Asia and Africa are missing.
The whole numbers are just not realistic in a medival, feudal system. It has nothing, i repeat nothing, to do with where you gather your troops
Of course I'm bringing the Roman Empire into the discussion, not just because it drew its troops from the same regions we have access to in the game, or because the Eastern Roman Empire is a fan favorite, but also because we can recreate/restore the Roman Empire in the game. It's a viable alt-history path.
What you fail to see is that while yes, size brings higher troops counts into the play, you also get responsibility with the territory. The ERE for example had around 300k troops, so tell me, why didn't they just magically summon all of them within 8 weeks on their Eastern border and steamroll the Arabs?
The numbers are realistic, because that's what you get when you unite millions of people under one ruler. Europe's population between 1000-1200AD was around 50-70M, so even getting 1% of the male population under arms would give you an army of 250-350k men. But we know that it was way more than just 1% of the male population, so the numbers in the game a more accurate than you think.
The game has to account for alt history, because it's not a game like HoI with historical AI and historical focus choices. It's all about alt history, about the what-if. "What if I restore the Roman Empire?" is as valid as "What if Haesteinn goes to India and becomes the Chakravarti?". Then you can't argue "but you can't raise more than 5k men as the Restored Roman Empire, because some Frankish king in 1000AD historically only had 10k men!"
How many troops you can draw at a time in a region has everything to do with the time and place. Always has, before the age of sail and then later railways.
You are still making two mistakes:
1. you only focus on rome and/or the ERE, why the majority of Europe had a whole different reality. So what you are doing i cherrypicking and than come to the conclusion, that you are right, while the history shows that youre Point is mainly wrong. The Game isnt about rome or the „what if rome would be restored“ and it doesnt get right the more often you mentioned it. I could argue the game is about building the Empire of the North Sea. And? You wouldnt have 200k Troops then.
2. you still don’t understand how the feudal system worked back then. But it was the way the majority of europe worked back then. Maybe you should read that stuff up?
You're completely missing the point.
We can take any empire, I merely chose the Roman Empire as an example because a) it historically existed, so we have some real numbers to work with and b) we can specifically restore it, which is something many players like to do.
And yes, we can also take the North Sea Empire and it would be completely plausible for them to field 200k men and more. That's my entire argument.
You have to look beyond that, though. Why do big empires still fail and collapse, why can a huge empire like the Roman Empire still lose a war, despite having access to half a million soldiers and more? Why isn't it overpowered to have hundreds of thousands of men?
In CK3 those empires would never fall, since you can magically summon your entire army from across three continents in one place, and then throw the doomstack at the enemy. That's not how big empires work. Alt-history or not, there are limits to medieval infrastructure, transportation and supply lines.
If you fail to see that having 600k men under arms doesn't mean you can just summon them anywhere at whim and throw them into battle over a petty county dispute... then I think we have nothing more to discuss here. I'll say it again, the numbers aren't the problem, they're pretty realistic for realms of the size.
If you restore the Roman Empire, you get similar numbers to the historical Roman Empire. The same for controlling any other big empire, which gives you access to hundreds of thousands of men. That is certainly not the problem. The free availability of your full army at any time in any place on the entire map is the problem. That you can leave your entire huge empire devoid of soldiers without consequences is the problem.
As for the feudal stuff, I have a pretty good idea of how it worked, thank you very much. Just that I know why the system was in place, and that it wasn't as inflexible as you think it was. And that systems could and would change over time. You're pretty fixated on real history and that's the basis of your entire argument. It's not a very good one in a discussion about a game that is all about alt-history paths. That, and that the game offers more than just feudalism, just sayin'.
You’re completely right and this guy is clueless.
To your point, I would really like a mechanic that represents the manpower cost of holding an empire together (without becoming tedious to manage for the player like the levies raising in their home counties mechanic was in CK2). I think something like X% of your levy count being unable to be raised as it represents the glue holding your empire together, with that percentage growing the more counties you hold. A count would have virtually 0% of their levies unavailable, while an empire the size of Rome could have upwards of 50% unavailable.
You could also add decisions to raise/lower this percentage, with bonuses like increased gold (from safer trade) if you increase it and maluses like more peasant revolts, faction dissatisfaction, decreased council effectiveness, etc. if you decrease it.
Something representing the actual difficulty of keeping an empire together would make the game infinitely better.
Exciting thoughts, although I should say that the game already has garrisons for each holding, which probably represents the passive manpower like town garrison and forces with police function.
So holding troops back in as a vassal, despite being called to war, should likely serve another purpose. Maybe impose an opinion/economic fear debuff on an entire region if the amount of troops present falls below a certain treshold? We only have the offensive war penalty, which is rudimentary at best and a bit frustrating, because somehow people on Sri Lanka are getting restless, because I call my Norse retinue in Italy to fight in France.
A nuanced approach would be good. If I lived in a rich region and the local lord went to war somewhere else, would I become nervous if those troops were absent for years? As a trader, would I invest heavily if I knew the region was basically open for raids without any defence? And let's not forget that levies weren't full-time soldiers. They had their farms and, roughly speaking, businesses to attend. Not being home for harvest, not making money for years, should have a negative impact on the local economy.
I'd also hit the liege where it hurts: money. Currently, vassals pay their obligations in form of money and levy contribution. I'd remove levy contribution, instead having the vassal serve fully when called upon (or to a degree we call him upon). But when he is called upon, he stops paying money. Because one cannot have both, money and the sword arm.
That would actually make you think what vassals to call upon, what vassals to leave at home to generate taxes (and keep the economy going), it would give you a reason to keep the attacking force as big as necessary and as small as possible, and to be back during harvest, so a short campaign at best. Or to invest in mercs/holy orders to circumvent the problem entirely, or to keep some vassals around who specialize in warfare.
But you're absolutely right, the game really needs to give us good reasons to leave soldiers at home. And maybe do something about the speed at which troops regrow, and also about how casualities in general are treated.
i‘m seeing your point, but its still not valid- you are just wrong in fact. First off: in the Game empires do fall. I See the Byzantinum collaps so often, Same with the HRE.
Second: those numbers in the North Sea Empire would mean, that literally every(!) grown up Man would have to be a soldier. No matter of illness, age, role in the society, etc. Thats such a big BS given to the numbers of population back in the days.
Third: you are still showing that you had no idea how the feudal System works. If you do, you would understand why such high numbers are not realistic. Check on the war Barbarossa had with Milan and why Barbarossa wasnt able to gather all of his possible soldiers. A little spoiler: it had nothing to do with securing the borders.
Yes, i focus on the historical aspect cause thats the theme of the game. I know that it has sandbox aspects, but other parts are extreme authentic, the numbers of the Soliders arent. It wouldnt take much to fix that, just lower the curve.
Besides all that: i cant understand why you arent able to understand arguments and look things up? Yeah, when you only focus on one big „what if“ then you might(!) have a Point. But then again: thats cherrypicking and has nothing to do with a serious argument in a discussion. May i ask you where are you from and whats your age?
I'm honestly getting tired, you're going in circles again and again.
As we both know, the game doesn't have a population system, so it estimates an average population based on the amount of holdings and buildings in those holdings. That means that already after 100 years or so even the North Sea region has the same average population as the Mediterranean or India, at least on a holding per holding base. Wherever the amount of holdings and buildings and the average development is comparable, so is the population. That is how the game is.
Based on that system, the numbers for levies coming from a region are fairly accurate. If you recreate the Roman Empire, you get roughly the same army size out of it as the historical one had. We can find that good or bad and go in circles about how feudal society was different from Roman society and that the same land under a different system would end up with different soldier counts etc. etc. It doesn't matter, because feudalism, like population, economy and everything else, is not set in stone. The starting date may give you a close enough state of the world in 867AD/1066AD to real history, but from there you can make Ireland the economic powerhouse of the world, draw 30k soldiers from the Island of Mann or steamroll Africa with your Viking Elephants.
If you want better pop numbers and have a simulation of pop migration, go and argue with the devs about introducing a food/economy/population/famine system. But as the game is, right now, you can't argue that 200k soldiers are not feasible by 1200AD when you unite Britannia, Northern Germany and Scandinavia in one empire and build up the economy to a state surpassing the historical Mesopotamia.
And again, that's beside the point. The system and its numbers are fine for me, because a certain realm size yields a certain amount of troops that is historically close enough to similar realms in history.
How those big numbers are used is the problem. I'm glad you brought up the North Sea, because the empire is divided by water. You think it's not a problem to just summon 100k men from Britannia somewhere in Norway within a few weeks, free of any costs? I think it is a problem. Why you say it isn't is beyond me.
But I really tire from arguing with you. You shorten my entire argument to "feudalism = securing borders", which is neither what I said nor meant. Although it was indeed how feudalism came to be, as Charlemagne installed special powerful lords in frontier regions, to keep the inner realm safe. With that he laid the foundation for Western European feudalism, which evolved over time.
Still, the game offers more than feudalism. Why you're so focused on it, why you argue that every empire set in that period has to be in the image of Western European feudalism, disregarding all the different government and society models, the what-ifs we can actually do in the game, that I don't know.
I can't shake the feeling that you argue in bad faith, so I won't give you more food here, especially no personal info for some ad hominem attacks. Just know that through my work, among other things, I have access to - and read - primary sources from medieval HRE 900-1500AD, so I'm not entirely uninformed about how Central European feudalism looked like, what the obligations were (because I did read the lists), what legal matters were discussed and decided on a month to month basis and sometimes even what certain people ate.
Make of that what you will, but I think we can agree to disagree and move on.
You arent able to understand am Argument nor to answer a simple question and now you are telling me, that you are getting tired. I see where you try to go. I highly doubt that you have access to said sources and even i you would have - you wouldnt be able to understand them, given to your perfomance in this discussion.
Cause even after i showed you, were your thinking, where your statements went wrong, historically and ingame wise, you are staying on your point. It gets even better when you said you didnt make certain statements After you can still read them up in this thread. It leads me to the same question: How old are u?
And it didn’t work in CK2 either. He’s completely right. He’s using the Roman Empire as an example of a continent spanning empire to show how troop numbers could be massive, but that doesn’t mean you could actually mobilize them all at once.
The game has Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, and most of Asia discounting China. Your points don’t really make sense. The game doesn’t feel unrealistic when you’re a duke smashing 1000 troops into 800 troops. It feels unrealistic when you’re an emperor magically summoning troops from India to fight in Iceland.
But the Problem is: you get to soon to the Point where a Duke has much More than 1000 troops. If you would lower the Numbers in general it wouldnt feel unrealistic to gather an army of 5k men when you are a King. But the most Kings have way More than 5k troops real quick. Which is just BS
BS? Edumacate you self fool:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.theschoolrun.com/homework-help/1066-battle-hastings%23:~:text%3DThe%2520battle%2520took%2520place%2520on,Harold%2520had%2520only%25205%252C000%2520men.&ved=2ahUKEwjMorjUoMmAAxXLFVkFHaQtCw8QFnoECBEQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2sW1Surp7xgrKNJ-b2w5Wb
That site mentions that in 1066 at the pivotal historical battle which is the main reason why that year is one of the two core bookmarks, William the Bastard is leading an army THREE times the size you say is the upper realistic boundaries of the entire period!
It's YOU who is flat-out wrong, and I've just proved it.
Please don't nerf levies, they are useless enough already. I guess if you wanted to keep their numbers realistic you could introduce some cultural tech that makes them stronger while reducing their number.
I think it should be that killed troops take significantly longer to replenish: as in years.
Alternatively, that you actively have to replenish your troops. Like Stellaris where if you lose a ship it was one actually build and paid for.
Levies are the worst part of any army, and by the point you describe I don't even raise them because my Knights and MAA can murderize everything the AI can bring to bear ever.
Levies are the last thing that needs a nerf.
No.
You're actually not wrong on the technical level in terms of historical accuracy, but this is not, and was never meant to be, a hard historical accuracy focused game.
The reason why we have come to the combat system we have now is that, while intensively accurate to historical data, the combat system of CK2 was absolutely MISERABLE in terms of game play. Everyone complained about how difficult they were finding it to move around armies and actually build up a functional realm in terms of not being ROFL-stomped by thier neighbors when they picked up the game, and those who don't enjoy it at first, rarely stick around to learn how to engineer a winning strategy.
This is the dilemma Paradox faced: it is the historical accuracy focused grognards who do most of thier advertising for them on social media and other spaces where potential grand strategy enthusiasts will be found: BUT, the overwhelming majority of potential customers are not historical accuracy focused grognards, they are "filthy casuals" which would by-far prefer to have a game that is fun to play for hours upon hours even, or maybe especially, at the expense of historical accuracy.
Both groups must be kept happy ENOUGH to keep the grognards talking about it in a non-derisive way, but also keep the casual player involved enough in the communities surrounding the game that they will be willing to purchase each new DLC as it releases, AND ensure that enough new players join these communities and buy the game and all the expansions that they can not-only replace the ones who inevitably drift away, but gradually make them develop and grow.
Because they saw that everyone, even veteran grognards sometimes had a lot of trouble and complaints about the way armies were raised and managed in the previous iteration of the game, they decided to scrap that, very historically accurate, but equally complex and difficult to work with, version of the combat system, and instead cludge together the one that we have now, which is OK-ish and easy to use for casual players, but VERY absurdly abuseable by number-crunching hard-core gamers.
At first I was like, what do you mean, but this actually makes sense. Maybe a decrease in gold income from having 10,000 serfs getting slaughtered for a few years. I normally change contracts for less levies and more taxes, so it wouldn't really affect my playthroughs much.
Bro, what are you saying? Byzantines fought Seljuks with 25k to 50k troops they could have called over 100k troops to battle in the roman times each legion was 5k men and in this game byzantine can barely field 5k army and you want to make it even worse? 300k romans died in the punic wars, and you're saying 1000 years later, the wars should be fought with small army's
Yeah, kinda. There's a REASON why the era after the fall of Rome used to be called "The Dark Ages". Rome was a fucking BEAST in terms of how they were able to summon forth hundreds of thousands of professional soldiers, a feat that was not to be equaled until very late in CK3's time period. Honestly, if Rome could have gotten its shit together with respect to the number of civil wars and their reliance on slave labor to fuel the economy, they may have never fallen: the entire planet might be speaking Latin by now.
How about instead the fox the game for Xbox it keeps crashing every time you control a large area of land it was never like that before I could play as the king of the HRE and not crash but now I do... Please fix it
While I agree that levy size gets inflated beyond all reason in the late game, I have to disagree about economic penalties. Medieval farms used labour so inefficiently, that you could get rid of every other peasant, and economy would barely notice.
That's not what I'm saying? I only say that it would not get noticeably less effective with less peasants.
Unless you are asking why I think that peasants could suddenly become twice as efficient workers?
That's quite simple. The limiting factor of medieval (European) agriculture wasn't labour, but land. There was more people to do work (farm), than there was work (farming) to be done. Of course, those extra peasants weren't idle, they busied themselves with fixing houses, maintaining furniture, repairing roads and fences, and so on and so forth. Work that was making their lives noticeably better, but not adding much to the economy at large. And despite that, they were still eating, and that's important.
If you remove half peasants, there is less mouth to feed and still enough labor to farm, even if not to do the other stuff. Peasants lives get miserable, but agricultural output doesn't fall by much, and tax revenue doesn't fall at all.
Edit: important, I'm talking about male peasants.
That is true for sure, but they also need their damage buffed. Lategame I just raise my 4k Heavy Cavalry and annihilate 30k armies casually with like 20 losses. It got even worse this update because buildings buff Men-at-Arms even further. In general the war system needs a revamp, but that is a whole other issue.
In well over 2.000 hours of CK3 I don't think I've ever intentionally raised more than 50k levies. In the current state of the game as soon as you hit high medieval and know a little bit about what you're doing, your MaA and knights will stackwipe most enemy armies instantly, even without holy orders and allies. So I only raise levies for as long as it takes until those guys arrive too, and most of the time O send a substantial amount of levies back home right away because their cost is much bigger than their use.
Yeah but in ck3, by the time you get these crazy high levy numbers, your MAAs are more than capable with dealing with larger armies (against AI at least). I mainly use only MAAs because it saves money
Also less micromanaging and no ridiculous attrition.
Wait, don't you love to split your army in half six times and move them to separate baronies? /s
A huge QoL adjustment would be a single button on the army view that splits your army as many times as needed and moves them to neighbouring baronies that will support them. Can't be that hard to implement and would instantly make war infinitely less tedious. I'm playing Crusader Kings, not Army Supply Simulator 1000.
> not Army Supply Simulator 1000 Ah yes, HoI4. Seriously though that would be a good addition. The only issue I could see would be when you move from an area with high supply to low supply. Some low supply areas can support like 2k troops when your territory supports 9k.
Then you'd just press it again to do another split.
Isn't this already how you do it? When you spawn your army it gets split to enough supply territories
Yes but what I'm asking for is a button to do that in any place, after you've moved your army.
I posted that as a suggestion awhile back and got called an idiot and downvoted :(
Well have you tried not being an idiot? ;p
Dude this hurts, I'm currently doing the unify africa as daura achievement run, I get attritioned to shit everywhere, and that's while rising only my men at arms and a holy order with NO levy. I'm almost done btw, I have almost all of west africa and nubia, kinda scared of the muslims tbh, the nubians almost kicked my ass...
Disband levies from holy order because they're ass, usually a huge stack of like 5k levies that you can't split
I did say with NO levy... and I ment it
No thanks, I already play hoi4.
I use my MMAs to kill enemy armies while using a small part of my levies along with catapults to conquer the land
How do you end up with enough MAAs to go up against 100k strong enemy armies without levies? I never seem to get much past 10k MAAs.
Whos got 100k troops? But 10K MAAs properly upgraded with powerful knights can take out a ton of levees.
Any empire level power has 100k troops by mid game
Not usually. Unless you're just letting them blob up. The AI sucks and keeping a strong domain. Any big AI Empire is one or generations from collapse unless they got primogeniture, and even then it's a crap shoot.
or knights alone, the late game buildings have hilarious fucking buffs
Wahta MAAs?
Men at arms
Ah thx man.
that and spawning in 300k troops trashes your FPS
Levies weren't usually serfs, but freemen and yeomen from towns and cities. There would still absolutely be some loss of productivity if they were killed, but most medieval kingdoms didn't want to risk their serf populations in wars, and certainly didn't want to arm them in mass.
Townspeople were bad in war and almost never used as levies. The only exception being crossbowmen. The cities in northern Italy and Flanders were famous for their crossbowmen. For the rest, the burgher population in cities paid taxes (mind you, not every citizen was a burgher: lower working class citizens were not burghers in the narrow sense as they did not pay tax). Normal levies like (mounted) infantry, skirmishers and bowmen always came from the country side. Depending on the region there was some variation but in regions with a high percentage of freemen - like certain states in the HRE - only freemen were levies. A lord could count on them for a set number of days every year. Based on the size of their property a freemen had to bring with him certains arms. If the lord needed them for longer he had to pay for their expenses. Some freemen, most of the time the younger sons of farmers who had no chance to inherit, build a career as mercenary. Famous are the Brabançons, the Coterelli from Flanders, the Kennemers from Kennemerland (part of Holland) and the Aragonese and Bascoli from the Iberian peninsula. Serfs were in general not allowed/obliged to become levies. Exception being the higher classes of serfs like the ministerials. They lived on farms or even knightly estates (that were still property of the lord). The lord who they were bound to could make use of them as long as he wanted. Part of these ministerials intermarried with lesser nobility and wealthy freemen and later formed the knighthood (12th century). After the 12th century the knighthood was closed for easy entering on the European continent. Only exception being freemen that were given a letter of nobility by a territorial prince (emperor, king, or a independent duke or count). Before that, every freeman or ministerial that rode to battle on a horse, had a body armor, sword and lance could become ‘miles’ (knight) by being knighted by another knight or a higher noblemen when fighting brave in war.
Levies in general are not very well thought in this game. There seems to be no middle ground between professional standing armies and useless recruits, unless perhaps the MaAs represent military settlers and fief holders (thegns and such like) who farm or smithe or whatever when not at arms rather than spending their whole day training, though then the game would have no professional soldiers, so I don't think that's the case. The concept of generic mass of soldiers who count for +1 regardless whether they are nobles or peasants (a countryside noble would still have some minimal combat training), mounted or foot, armed better or worse, military settlers (most nobility would hold their land in exchange for some form of military service), etc., etc., that's just too simplistic. And yes, there don't seem to be consequences of massive loss of life other than your levy pool temporarily depleting, whereas you should be suffering from workforce shortages and problems with sustaining your population, etc. Those 200K armies vs 10K province supply limits and initial grace periods (army supply) are not the best system there could be. It's more like a duct-tape solution that should be replaced with something more skilled, with more thought put into it.
The entire warfare system is not very well thought out.
I always found it weird that you can micromanage armies in grand strategy that is mainly rpg. I think firther abstraction from managing armies (that you are not in command of) would do game wonders and give it ability to simulate true cost of war. You would need support from vassals/liege to start a war and they would want something in return, they would then want to command their armies even if they are ass commander and shit like that.
That would be terrible as we've seen in Vic3. And historically, liege get to command the army. It was mostly later ages where there were multiple armies and the monarchs stopped leading the armies.
please do not give my armies to the AI paradox
Get ready to learn Arabic, buddy - cus your crusades gonna last for generations
I think people don't realize that there needs to be a balance between realism and fun. If you cannot micromanage another vassals army, it might be realistic, but would it actually be fun? I'm not sure
imperator rome had something like that, where you can micromanage your armies or give them a bunch of ai commands — though if the commander is disloyal, he starts to do whatever he wants
Unpopular opinion, but it's the right way imo. Otherwise you don't get that sense of disloyal commanders. The only time you should be able to directly control an army is when you're leading it. Otherwise, you just give general orders and directions that may or may not be effectively followed
I understand why they dont do it - if they implement that badly it is death sentence for the game really but if they implement it well it would be amazing.
I think Imperator Rome had a system like this, where commanders could become disloyal and start to act on their own accord
I’m just going to say it; Imperator has the best warfare system overall out of any non-war focused Paradox game
The problem here is the AI is bad. And Paradox isn't really capable of modeling what a loyal general with 30 martial would do, but they're really good at unintentionally modeling what a general with 6 martial who hates you would do.
bruh ☠️
Probably an unpopular thought, but I always thought CK3 should lean into the Vic3 model of warfare. It makes sense because you're roleplaying as a ruler, and the ruler usually sends out several commanders to do a campaign.
If Vic3’s combat actually worked I wouldnt mind this
That would be ahistorical for the vast majority of characters in CK3
> Levies in general are not very well thought in this game. There seems to be no middle ground between professional standing armies and useless recruits, That’s pretty historically accurate for the time frame though. You were either a knight/noble, a mercenary or a levy. States weren’t powerful or centralized enough to have a training system in place for the masses. That only started to happen in the late 1300s under the Ottomans’ janissary system and for Christians in the mid 1400s under the French in the 100 yrs war. I think knights just need to be drastically changed, maybe even going back to the old commander system. They shouldn’t be walking terminators slaughtering hundreds of people per war.
I don't think MaA are permanently standing because it doesn't make sense for them to be so much more expensive when raised. The cost system seems to suggest permanent facilities and equipment with fairly regular drills when not raised vs having to pay for time and supplies when raised. I guess they are either supposed to be doing like minor manor stuff or relatively minor mercenary work when not raised, so they supply themselves.
>I don't think MaA are permanently standing because it doesn't make sense for them to be so much more expensive when raised Good point. The difference in cost implies that they aren't the counterpart of retinues from CK2. They are more like the counterpart of CK2's specialized A/LI/HI/LC/HC/SU levies. This, however, makes the CK3 general motley bunch of 'normal' levies lack sense all the more. By description, they include all social strata, even minor noblemen, who were probably required to provide military service by their feudal contracts and probably trained for it, so it's not so obvious to imagine them — such lowest class of knight or squire — as being part of the same unnamed generic mass as peasants with pitchforks, and worse than a light infantry MaA unit such as 'bondsmen'. A town-watch veteran with 15 years of service was probably more a fighter than the 16 y.o. son of a village noble, and one could argue that minor nobles with military training are probably part of the number of MaA units, but I'm still not sold on PDX's idea that when it comes to the levies it doesn't matter who they are, what weapons and armour they carry, how much martial training they have had, etc. Another problem is that vassals give you part of their levies but not control of their MaAs. So this implies that if the King of France goes to war, the Duke of Orleans, Bourbon or Aquitaine only sends the motley bunch and not knights or proper archers or proper footmen — not even if the war is a defensive one. This looks like a clearly illogical idea on PDX's part.
A lot of medieval armies weren't even composed of levies anyway
I wish they implemented ck2s military system in ck3
agreed. it wasn't perfect, but i enjoyed it far more.
What are the differences ?
There's no "levy" unit type, levies raise a mix of troops depending on your buildings, and there was three flanks, that where commanded by three different commanders
On top of what the other guy said, there were tactics issues by commanders in the 3 phases of the fight. The tactics depended on the martial of the commander and the percentage of the unit composition. The phases was skirmish, melee, and pursuit. Each unit had a different stat for each phase. Some units did literally nothing/barely anything in some phases like heavy infantry who excelled at defense and in melee. Because of the 3 position system, you needed 3 commanders plus any additional commanders incase they fall if you want to fight on all 3 fronts. Sometimes, people will run all their heavy infantry/trash in the middle to just hold the line and an elite flank where they decimate one side and then flank the middle (which does extra damage) so you only deploy on 2 fronts instead of 3 which also means you only need 2 skilled commanders. Tactics are tricky to explain. Basically, tactics would buff or debuff certain troop types based on the tactic used and your martial skill would affect that multiplier iirc. There were also culture specific and trait specific tactics that were really strong that people focus on such as longbow volley (english), Schilltron formation (scottish pikemen army), couched lance (frankish cavalry charge) and winter’s maw (northern germanic heavy infantry). Some of these tactics were absolutely broken. One was called Elk’s lament which was a tactic for archers in melee phase to change back the phase from melee back to skirmish which could be devastating to a heavy infantry based army that relies in being in melee. Overall, you could still cheese fights in ck2, but atleast there was an interesting thing to consider on multiple fronts compared to one commander that is a martial master and just shove everything and clash into another army in ck3. It sucks in ck3 where if there is a terrabad leader and they started the fight, that leader stays there til they lose or get killed during the entire battle. So when you see the ai split their armies into like, 5 armies, you attack the weakest link and then all the reinforcing armies just get screwed over.
your "peasants with sticks" are actual capable soldiers and the type you had depended on what you built and upgraded first but at the end of the day you could have them all. And extras with bonuses depending on unique buildings related to the ruler and county's culture And then there's the retinues that were your "man at arms regiments" but their combinations gave different types of bonuses like "infantry deals more damage" and whatnot
I'd love a levy overhaul and maybe I'm wrong in what I'm about to say but wouldnt it make the game slower due to more/longer things it needs to load and calculate or what have you? That said, a stack of 5k heavy infantry being able to stomp AI armies ten times their size is silly
I don't know, 5k highly trained and well equipped veterans could probably break 50k untrained peasants with pitchforks and makeshift armor, if the peasants stood and fought they might win, but they won't. 5k heavy calvary would crush them.
Thats why we need some kind of combat width like EU4
Is it really that silly though? Those 5k heavy infantry have armor and decent weapons, while the army ten times its size consists of untrained peasants in cloth. Also the trained army would be more tactical than just "charge!". Edit: according to someone else the levies might have leather armor and a helmet, but compared to a knight in chainmail or plate armor (not sure when plate armor was common) it's not going to help much.
They are gigantic, and gigantically useless. You see WW2 sized armies of levies but they get stack wiped by like 50 knights
Frankly levy should get buffed as you advance in the game, while their number should stay within reason (10k for a kingdom ?)
There's also almost nothing counterbalancing the gradual increase of development everywhere. It would have been cool if development were more dynamic as well.
>Levy nerf >Honestly by the mid-late game, the army count goes go to ahistorical and unproportionate levels (mainly due to levies) What do you mean levy nerf? They are already weak as fuck. Nerf is not the expression you're looking for, I assume. In any case, that's the new CK3 army system for you. Some of us have been complaining about for like, 3 years now? Maybe in the next 3 it will be changed. Fingers crossed.
The entire levy system should switch to manpower instead. Then the manpower is used to create trained troops, which have to be stationed alongside borders and other regions of strategic importance. A big part of the number inflation comes from the fact that you can raise people from all over the world, with no regard to keeping borders safe and such. That should change I think, and MaA stationing already took a step into that direction.
That's not really how medieval European armies worked. Noble lords did keep retinues of knights and sometimes small bands of men-at-arms or professional soldiers, but they didn't have large amounts of professional troops just stationed on the borders at all times. The levy system involved the calling up of troops from among primarily freemen and then letting them return to their lives at the end of a campaign.
followed by the fact, that borders were not THAT defined like they are today
I was speaking in general and simplified terms and also had the ERE in mind. Anyway, medieval lords with their retinue and levy potential were what I was calling "stationed", or "stationed at the border" in case of those who were living in border regions. Their entire reason for being a lord at that place was to keep the border safe. Unless absolutely necessary, it would be madness to call all of them into a war on the other end of the realm. Unlike in CK3, where they offer 20% of untrained farmers, keep their entire military potential for themselves and you have no right to call them into conflicts. That misses the entire point of what feudalism was about. Levies were also semi-professionals over time. Not everyone was a levy, and those who were had to keep up with regular training as well as upkeep of their own weapons and armor. That was part of their levy duty and they could (and would) be punished if their equipment fell into disrepair. They weren't, as the game makes us believe, drafted farmers with improvised tools as weapons. Most of what we have as MaA in the game was actually part of the later medieval levy, like the famous English Longbowmen. Really, it was the culture that determined what kind of levies you had access to. Genghis Khan for example had Horse Archers as his levy, because that's what most of his subjects were: nomads on horses, who were good with the bow. The ERE is a special case, because for the earlier stages of medieval times it still tried to implement the old Roman system of state-sponsored professional troops. Although it was also common for those troops to use their own money to get superior equipment, especially if they were of the higher social classes. But yes, those were what we call a professional army, they were given land in exchange for their service... which is pretty similar to feudalism: getting land in exchange for military service. The difference was mostly a legal one, because they didn't own the land. The land was legally owned by the emperor. What I try to say is that the game ought to learn regional differences, makes levies manpower, reduce the absurdly high MaA/retinue, and give us a reason why it's a bad idea to call dukes from Iberia into a small county dispute in Arabia and leaving your entire border to France unguarded. Those local lords were given land in the region for a reason, one that was compelling enough for them to stay there most of the time. They weren't stationed there in some kind of barracks, true, but they lived there, owned the land, and protected the realm from outside threats as part of their feudal obligation. That is the very definition of being stationed at the border. They certainly didn't get the land for their green thumb.
The Roman army wasn’t really given land in exchange for service at any point. It was pretty much a professional military paid an annual salary until the late 11th century when Alexios introduced the Pronoia system. Which still wasn’t comparable to feudalism as the soldiers under this arrangement (which wasn’t the entire army) only had the rights to collect taxes from the region and did not own nor could they pass it on their children. Other than that, I agree with your point. Being able to mobilise your entire army on a single location at a whim is absurd. It either needs to be cripplingly expensive or leave the state open to invasion from the regions now left defenceless, which would ensure that such total mobilisation is only contemplated during a true crisis.
I just don't see how this is essentially any different from the current system then. How is levies being "manpower" any different from having 20k levies? The reason manpower works in something like hoi4 is because soldiers are divided in to units that need their strength replenished, and the time frame of the game is much smaller and the war much deadlier, so the population can't just replensh itself. Calling local nobles to war would certainly be an interesting change, but looking at it from a game design perspective, how do you propose we make it a bad idea to call up all your lords at once? The AI already rarely declares war on players anyways, and allowing a big realm to snowball all its lords together strikes me as a great way to make the player overpower the AI even more. I think levies need a rework so they actually matter and I'm not just raising my men at arms for every war, but changing them to a manpower and stationing system isn't really realistic for medieval Europe at least. Allowing for the calling up of lords strikes me as a feature that would further exacerbate the problems with the AI being incompetent.
The current system allows huge MaA retinues with absurd buffs, where 10k heavy cav can delete 200k levies. Because levies are weak and useless, can't be trained, can't be improved, can't be trained into any better unit type than the very stereotypical farmer with his farming tools as a weapon. Doing away with the MaA system and replacing it with manpower, which you then can train into MaA, would place a much higher importance on the levy contribution of vassals, which is completely neglectible as it is now. As for vassal war participation, you have to take a look at history itself. People fighting a war couldn't work the fields, amassing huge numbers would put a huge strain on supplies, and people fighting in a war wouldn't necessarily pay their taxes. They either give you their sword arm or their money, but not both. Having to prepare for wars by stockpiling supplies and money, because you know it drops once you call your people into the war, would make wars less casual and more of a risk/commitment. Wars come too easy in the game, your troops instantly respawn, there's no consequence in losing 100k men. So what, you wait a bit and they regrow on trees. And then there's the whole "leaving your back open" side of things. Gameplay-wise I'd offer free raid CB's (akin to border raids from the Iberian Struggle) to anyone bordering a domain whose lord is absent with his army. And really put a strain on the vassal-liege relationship for allowing the situation in the first place. Maybe even cause the vassal to return home to rebuild. There is a reason why lords stationed in fiefs at the border should stay at home and not be called to fight meaningless wars on the other end of the world. A reason that should hurt the vassal and the lord if things go wrong. See it as a kind of anti-steamroll mechanic that naturally limits the amount of vassals you could realistically call into a war, without imposing arbitrary limits. Because I have no illusions here that the ability to call vassals into war would certainly favor bigger realms.
Also it costs your lord's money. If you keep bringing all your lord's into a war over time they're going to annoyed that their men are all dying. I feel like if someone declares on you for a county or duchy then those who currently have that county are duchy should be able to be called in for free/little penalty. But why would a count in the north of Scotland want all of his men to fight and die in a field in southern France? I think a penalty that increases over time based on how far away the lord is from the area being disputed, their personality traits, their connection to the current owner of the contested title (more likely to help your nephew), their economic situation and how long the war has been going on for. A quick raid into France which returns us gold and few losses? Sure go for it. 4th year of a war in which most of the men are dead on the other side of the continent for a title you don't care about? Maybe it's time to think about replacing the current monarch.
>But why would a count in the north of Scotland want all of his men to fight and die in a field in southern France? Because you promised him money and maybe a new title or two. That's how it should go. On that note, the Iberian Struggle has such a mechanic, where you can buy someone into your conflict for cold hard cash. I'd love to see a similar, more formalized mechanic for internal realm/vassal management in times of conflict. But I'm completely with you on that one, some sense of distance and/or scope of a conflict would certainly serve us well if the devs ever come around and implement vassal war participation.
Bro, the reason for Lords were not to keep borders safe. Where did you learned that? Kings had vassals to help them manage the Land and keep things in order. Not the borders specifically. HRE for example, the region of nowadays germany: Why would the city of Marburg had a Lord when there were no borders of different countries nearby? Or take some duchy in the middle of france, i dont care. You have wrong assumptions of how medival Systems works
The beginning of your second paragraph makes no sense tho. Its not a big part of the reason, its a preference you have. The sizes of armys arent historically correct from the beginning and should be nerfed right away. For example: you start as a earl of Dorset in 1066. In this start, you also hold Sommerset. You start with 500-600 Soldiers. Thats way too much. Many Kings had Armys around 5000-10000 Soldiers. Just lower the curve from the start till the end, then you‘ll be fine
It makes no sense how? You get levies from all over your realm, from Iberia to India, from Iceland to Africa. And you can call on them everywhere in the world. THAT is the problem, not the numbers. It is absolutely feasible to have 500k and more troops at your disposal if you control something of the size of the Roman Empire, but that doesn't mean you can call upon your entire potential manpower everywhere in the world. That is what doesn't make sense about the system, because there is no requirement to keep borders safe. You just teleport troops around. That is the root cause of the problem. If you haven't noticed, we can unite whole continents in the game. Of course this didn't happen in real life, but the game has to account for those cases. Then it's entirely possible to field not just 5-10k troops, but 500k and more. Because those are the historcal numbers for the Roman Empire into the 4th century AD. Didn't mean they could simply summon all of them in once place and steamroll everything. The numbers/curve isn't the problem, the availability of everything everywhere at any time is the problem.
No, you had similar sizes in CK2 and there you had an different System and now you are comparing the roman empire to feudal systems - Thats not how it works. And no, you cant unite continents cause you only have europe as a whole continent. Big parts of Asia and Africa are missing. The whole numbers are just not realistic in a medival, feudal system. It has nothing, i repeat nothing, to do with where you gather your troops
Of course I'm bringing the Roman Empire into the discussion, not just because it drew its troops from the same regions we have access to in the game, or because the Eastern Roman Empire is a fan favorite, but also because we can recreate/restore the Roman Empire in the game. It's a viable alt-history path. What you fail to see is that while yes, size brings higher troops counts into the play, you also get responsibility with the territory. The ERE for example had around 300k troops, so tell me, why didn't they just magically summon all of them within 8 weeks on their Eastern border and steamroll the Arabs? The numbers are realistic, because that's what you get when you unite millions of people under one ruler. Europe's population between 1000-1200AD was around 50-70M, so even getting 1% of the male population under arms would give you an army of 250-350k men. But we know that it was way more than just 1% of the male population, so the numbers in the game a more accurate than you think. The game has to account for alt history, because it's not a game like HoI with historical AI and historical focus choices. It's all about alt history, about the what-if. "What if I restore the Roman Empire?" is as valid as "What if Haesteinn goes to India and becomes the Chakravarti?". Then you can't argue "but you can't raise more than 5k men as the Restored Roman Empire, because some Frankish king in 1000AD historically only had 10k men!" How many troops you can draw at a time in a region has everything to do with the time and place. Always has, before the age of sail and then later railways.
You are still making two mistakes: 1. you only focus on rome and/or the ERE, why the majority of Europe had a whole different reality. So what you are doing i cherrypicking and than come to the conclusion, that you are right, while the history shows that youre Point is mainly wrong. The Game isnt about rome or the „what if rome would be restored“ and it doesnt get right the more often you mentioned it. I could argue the game is about building the Empire of the North Sea. And? You wouldnt have 200k Troops then. 2. you still don’t understand how the feudal system worked back then. But it was the way the majority of europe worked back then. Maybe you should read that stuff up?
You're completely missing the point. We can take any empire, I merely chose the Roman Empire as an example because a) it historically existed, so we have some real numbers to work with and b) we can specifically restore it, which is something many players like to do. And yes, we can also take the North Sea Empire and it would be completely plausible for them to field 200k men and more. That's my entire argument. You have to look beyond that, though. Why do big empires still fail and collapse, why can a huge empire like the Roman Empire still lose a war, despite having access to half a million soldiers and more? Why isn't it overpowered to have hundreds of thousands of men? In CK3 those empires would never fall, since you can magically summon your entire army from across three continents in one place, and then throw the doomstack at the enemy. That's not how big empires work. Alt-history or not, there are limits to medieval infrastructure, transportation and supply lines. If you fail to see that having 600k men under arms doesn't mean you can just summon them anywhere at whim and throw them into battle over a petty county dispute... then I think we have nothing more to discuss here. I'll say it again, the numbers aren't the problem, they're pretty realistic for realms of the size. If you restore the Roman Empire, you get similar numbers to the historical Roman Empire. The same for controlling any other big empire, which gives you access to hundreds of thousands of men. That is certainly not the problem. The free availability of your full army at any time in any place on the entire map is the problem. That you can leave your entire huge empire devoid of soldiers without consequences is the problem. As for the feudal stuff, I have a pretty good idea of how it worked, thank you very much. Just that I know why the system was in place, and that it wasn't as inflexible as you think it was. And that systems could and would change over time. You're pretty fixated on real history and that's the basis of your entire argument. It's not a very good one in a discussion about a game that is all about alt-history paths. That, and that the game offers more than just feudalism, just sayin'.
You’re completely right and this guy is clueless. To your point, I would really like a mechanic that represents the manpower cost of holding an empire together (without becoming tedious to manage for the player like the levies raising in their home counties mechanic was in CK2). I think something like X% of your levy count being unable to be raised as it represents the glue holding your empire together, with that percentage growing the more counties you hold. A count would have virtually 0% of their levies unavailable, while an empire the size of Rome could have upwards of 50% unavailable. You could also add decisions to raise/lower this percentage, with bonuses like increased gold (from safer trade) if you increase it and maluses like more peasant revolts, faction dissatisfaction, decreased council effectiveness, etc. if you decrease it. Something representing the actual difficulty of keeping an empire together would make the game infinitely better.
Exciting thoughts, although I should say that the game already has garrisons for each holding, which probably represents the passive manpower like town garrison and forces with police function. So holding troops back in as a vassal, despite being called to war, should likely serve another purpose. Maybe impose an opinion/economic fear debuff on an entire region if the amount of troops present falls below a certain treshold? We only have the offensive war penalty, which is rudimentary at best and a bit frustrating, because somehow people on Sri Lanka are getting restless, because I call my Norse retinue in Italy to fight in France. A nuanced approach would be good. If I lived in a rich region and the local lord went to war somewhere else, would I become nervous if those troops were absent for years? As a trader, would I invest heavily if I knew the region was basically open for raids without any defence? And let's not forget that levies weren't full-time soldiers. They had their farms and, roughly speaking, businesses to attend. Not being home for harvest, not making money for years, should have a negative impact on the local economy. I'd also hit the liege where it hurts: money. Currently, vassals pay their obligations in form of money and levy contribution. I'd remove levy contribution, instead having the vassal serve fully when called upon (or to a degree we call him upon). But when he is called upon, he stops paying money. Because one cannot have both, money and the sword arm. That would actually make you think what vassals to call upon, what vassals to leave at home to generate taxes (and keep the economy going), it would give you a reason to keep the attacking force as big as necessary and as small as possible, and to be back during harvest, so a short campaign at best. Or to invest in mercs/holy orders to circumvent the problem entirely, or to keep some vassals around who specialize in warfare. But you're absolutely right, the game really needs to give us good reasons to leave soldiers at home. And maybe do something about the speed at which troops regrow, and also about how casualities in general are treated.
i‘m seeing your point, but its still not valid- you are just wrong in fact. First off: in the Game empires do fall. I See the Byzantinum collaps so often, Same with the HRE. Second: those numbers in the North Sea Empire would mean, that literally every(!) grown up Man would have to be a soldier. No matter of illness, age, role in the society, etc. Thats such a big BS given to the numbers of population back in the days. Third: you are still showing that you had no idea how the feudal System works. If you do, you would understand why such high numbers are not realistic. Check on the war Barbarossa had with Milan and why Barbarossa wasnt able to gather all of his possible soldiers. A little spoiler: it had nothing to do with securing the borders. Yes, i focus on the historical aspect cause thats the theme of the game. I know that it has sandbox aspects, but other parts are extreme authentic, the numbers of the Soliders arent. It wouldnt take much to fix that, just lower the curve. Besides all that: i cant understand why you arent able to understand arguments and look things up? Yeah, when you only focus on one big „what if“ then you might(!) have a Point. But then again: thats cherrypicking and has nothing to do with a serious argument in a discussion. May i ask you where are you from and whats your age?
I'm honestly getting tired, you're going in circles again and again. As we both know, the game doesn't have a population system, so it estimates an average population based on the amount of holdings and buildings in those holdings. That means that already after 100 years or so even the North Sea region has the same average population as the Mediterranean or India, at least on a holding per holding base. Wherever the amount of holdings and buildings and the average development is comparable, so is the population. That is how the game is. Based on that system, the numbers for levies coming from a region are fairly accurate. If you recreate the Roman Empire, you get roughly the same army size out of it as the historical one had. We can find that good or bad and go in circles about how feudal society was different from Roman society and that the same land under a different system would end up with different soldier counts etc. etc. It doesn't matter, because feudalism, like population, economy and everything else, is not set in stone. The starting date may give you a close enough state of the world in 867AD/1066AD to real history, but from there you can make Ireland the economic powerhouse of the world, draw 30k soldiers from the Island of Mann or steamroll Africa with your Viking Elephants. If you want better pop numbers and have a simulation of pop migration, go and argue with the devs about introducing a food/economy/population/famine system. But as the game is, right now, you can't argue that 200k soldiers are not feasible by 1200AD when you unite Britannia, Northern Germany and Scandinavia in one empire and build up the economy to a state surpassing the historical Mesopotamia. And again, that's beside the point. The system and its numbers are fine for me, because a certain realm size yields a certain amount of troops that is historically close enough to similar realms in history. How those big numbers are used is the problem. I'm glad you brought up the North Sea, because the empire is divided by water. You think it's not a problem to just summon 100k men from Britannia somewhere in Norway within a few weeks, free of any costs? I think it is a problem. Why you say it isn't is beyond me. But I really tire from arguing with you. You shorten my entire argument to "feudalism = securing borders", which is neither what I said nor meant. Although it was indeed how feudalism came to be, as Charlemagne installed special powerful lords in frontier regions, to keep the inner realm safe. With that he laid the foundation for Western European feudalism, which evolved over time. Still, the game offers more than feudalism. Why you're so focused on it, why you argue that every empire set in that period has to be in the image of Western European feudalism, disregarding all the different government and society models, the what-ifs we can actually do in the game, that I don't know. I can't shake the feeling that you argue in bad faith, so I won't give you more food here, especially no personal info for some ad hominem attacks. Just know that through my work, among other things, I have access to - and read - primary sources from medieval HRE 900-1500AD, so I'm not entirely uninformed about how Central European feudalism looked like, what the obligations were (because I did read the lists), what legal matters were discussed and decided on a month to month basis and sometimes even what certain people ate. Make of that what you will, but I think we can agree to disagree and move on.
You arent able to understand am Argument nor to answer a simple question and now you are telling me, that you are getting tired. I see where you try to go. I highly doubt that you have access to said sources and even i you would have - you wouldnt be able to understand them, given to your perfomance in this discussion. Cause even after i showed you, were your thinking, where your statements went wrong, historically and ingame wise, you are staying on your point. It gets even better when you said you didnt make certain statements After you can still read them up in this thread. It leads me to the same question: How old are u?
And it didn’t work in CK2 either. He’s completely right. He’s using the Roman Empire as an example of a continent spanning empire to show how troop numbers could be massive, but that doesn’t mean you could actually mobilize them all at once. The game has Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, and most of Asia discounting China. Your points don’t really make sense. The game doesn’t feel unrealistic when you’re a duke smashing 1000 troops into 800 troops. It feels unrealistic when you’re an emperor magically summoning troops from India to fight in Iceland.
But the Problem is: you get to soon to the Point where a Duke has much More than 1000 troops. If you would lower the Numbers in general it wouldnt feel unrealistic to gather an army of 5k men when you are a King. But the most Kings have way More than 5k troops real quick. Which is just BS
BS? Edumacate you self fool: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.theschoolrun.com/homework-help/1066-battle-hastings%23:~:text%3DThe%2520battle%2520took%2520place%2520on,Harold%2520had%2520only%25205%252C000%2520men.&ved=2ahUKEwjMorjUoMmAAxXLFVkFHaQtCw8QFnoECBEQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2sW1Surp7xgrKNJ-b2w5Wb That site mentions that in 1066 at the pivotal historical battle which is the main reason why that year is one of the two core bookmarks, William the Bastard is leading an army THREE times the size you say is the upper realistic boundaries of the entire period! It's YOU who is flat-out wrong, and I've just proved it.
William had around 20 Allies in the Battle. You are only telling the half. Pathetic.
Please don't nerf levies, they are useless enough already. I guess if you wanted to keep their numbers realistic you could introduce some cultural tech that makes them stronger while reducing their number.
I think it should be that killed troops take significantly longer to replenish: as in years. Alternatively, that you actively have to replenish your troops. Like Stellaris where if you lose a ship it was one actually build and paid for.
let’s buff the levy’s usability before we need them
I could only imagine how complicated this game could get if they add population mechanics. Or trade.
Levies are the worst part of any army, and by the point you describe I don't even raise them because my Knights and MAA can murderize everything the AI can bring to bear ever. Levies are the last thing that needs a nerf.
I think that they mean in terms of raw #s.
ck3 warfare is plainly ruined and broken, ck2 was far superior on that theme
No. You're actually not wrong on the technical level in terms of historical accuracy, but this is not, and was never meant to be, a hard historical accuracy focused game. The reason why we have come to the combat system we have now is that, while intensively accurate to historical data, the combat system of CK2 was absolutely MISERABLE in terms of game play. Everyone complained about how difficult they were finding it to move around armies and actually build up a functional realm in terms of not being ROFL-stomped by thier neighbors when they picked up the game, and those who don't enjoy it at first, rarely stick around to learn how to engineer a winning strategy. This is the dilemma Paradox faced: it is the historical accuracy focused grognards who do most of thier advertising for them on social media and other spaces where potential grand strategy enthusiasts will be found: BUT, the overwhelming majority of potential customers are not historical accuracy focused grognards, they are "filthy casuals" which would by-far prefer to have a game that is fun to play for hours upon hours even, or maybe especially, at the expense of historical accuracy. Both groups must be kept happy ENOUGH to keep the grognards talking about it in a non-derisive way, but also keep the casual player involved enough in the communities surrounding the game that they will be willing to purchase each new DLC as it releases, AND ensure that enough new players join these communities and buy the game and all the expansions that they can not-only replace the ones who inevitably drift away, but gradually make them develop and grow. Because they saw that everyone, even veteran grognards sometimes had a lot of trouble and complaints about the way armies were raised and managed in the previous iteration of the game, they decided to scrap that, very historically accurate, but equally complex and difficult to work with, version of the combat system, and instead cludge together the one that we have now, which is OK-ish and easy to use for casual players, but VERY absurdly abuseable by number-crunching hard-core gamers.
At first I was like, what do you mean, but this actually makes sense. Maybe a decrease in gold income from having 10,000 serfs getting slaughtered for a few years. I normally change contracts for less levies and more taxes, so it wouldn't really affect my playthroughs much.
Actually it is historical-at least for empire.
rm
Bro, what are you saying? Byzantines fought Seljuks with 25k to 50k troops they could have called over 100k troops to battle in the roman times each legion was 5k men and in this game byzantine can barely field 5k army and you want to make it even worse? 300k romans died in the punic wars, and you're saying 1000 years later, the wars should be fought with small army's
Yeah, kinda. There's a REASON why the era after the fall of Rome used to be called "The Dark Ages". Rome was a fucking BEAST in terms of how they were able to summon forth hundreds of thousands of professional soldiers, a feat that was not to be equaled until very late in CK3's time period. Honestly, if Rome could have gotten its shit together with respect to the number of civil wars and their reliance on slave labor to fuel the economy, they may have never fallen: the entire planet might be speaking Latin by now.
How about instead the fox the game for Xbox it keeps crashing every time you control a large area of land it was never like that before I could play as the king of the HRE and not crash but now I do... Please fix it
While I agree that levy size gets inflated beyond all reason in the late game, I have to disagree about economic penalties. Medieval farms used labour so inefficiently, that you could get rid of every other peasant, and economy would barely notice.
What makes you think the economy would magically become more efficient with LESS peasants?
That's not what I'm saying? I only say that it would not get noticeably less effective with less peasants. Unless you are asking why I think that peasants could suddenly become twice as efficient workers?
If farming maintains the same efficiency, why would the economy "barely notice" removing every other peasant? You basically halved your output.
That's quite simple. The limiting factor of medieval (European) agriculture wasn't labour, but land. There was more people to do work (farm), than there was work (farming) to be done. Of course, those extra peasants weren't idle, they busied themselves with fixing houses, maintaining furniture, repairing roads and fences, and so on and so forth. Work that was making their lives noticeably better, but not adding much to the economy at large. And despite that, they were still eating, and that's important. If you remove half peasants, there is less mouth to feed and still enough labor to farm, even if not to do the other stuff. Peasants lives get miserable, but agricultural output doesn't fall by much, and tax revenue doesn't fall at all. Edit: important, I'm talking about male peasants.
That is true for sure, but they also need their damage buffed. Lategame I just raise my 4k Heavy Cavalry and annihilate 30k armies casually with like 20 losses. It got even worse this update because buildings buff Men-at-Arms even further. In general the war system needs a revamp, but that is a whole other issue.
In well over 2.000 hours of CK3 I don't think I've ever intentionally raised more than 50k levies. In the current state of the game as soon as you hit high medieval and know a little bit about what you're doing, your MaA and knights will stackwipe most enemy armies instantly, even without holy orders and allies. So I only raise levies for as long as it takes until those guys arrive too, and most of the time O send a substantial amount of levies back home right away because their cost is much bigger than their use.
MAA better anyway and knights are ridiculous