COMMUNITY - FORUMS - FAMILIES & NOBLE HOUSES
A few questions

Hello, I recently discovered this absolute gem of a game a few days ago and after reading the dev journals and watching the Q&A sessions I can for sure say that I will DEFIANTLY be pledging on a count level when I gather enough money.

Now on to my questions.

How exactly will large scale combat work in the game without being a laggy mess? I can't remember if it was Q&A or an interview but one of the devs said that the reason they put a 100k player cap on servers wasn't because the server couldn't handle it but rather it would be largely a problem on the client side. If a kingdom goes to war with another kingdom I would expect that you would find at least a few hundred if not thousands of people in a close proximity whether it is in sieges or battles out in the field. Would making these large scale battles instances remedy this?

Game mechanic wise how will you gather troops? In another Q&A that I can't name, I remember that one of the devs said it would be more of a hands off approach to massing troops in a location. I think the example was you would send messengers to tell your vassles to gather troops and meet at this location at this time. That's all find and dandy and I have no complaints with that. However how will you get troops? Is it like a tax collector that starts knocking on doors and pushing a spear in someones hands and say "let's go"? Instead of collecting money, you collect men. I would assume that you could post a decree on a notice board of sorts, or perhaps posting a notice on everyone's door like a spear toting Martin Luther.

Are there consequences for your average farmer not answering a call to arms? How would you even know if he didn't come? Could you pay a lump sum to get out of military service? Does everyone that is conscripted have to sign a contract? If two kingdoms go to war and you really think about it, it's an absolute nightmare logistically speaking. You have to gather the troops, mass supplies, be able to move those troops and supplies across a hostile land while most likely under constant harassment. I would suspect a kingdom would lose a lot of soldiers and supplies on their campaign. How would desertion work? Are there any game mechanics tied to this or is it all player driven? Meaning if someone deserts, is there a way for them to be flagged as a criminal?

Also all of the questions above apply to NPC's and OPC's. How do they interact with all of this?

Lets say i'm a count and I have an average amount of land and a average amount of inhabitants. How many soldiers could I expect to realistically raise for a planned offensive war? Also in my average city as a count how many guards could I expect to patrol my streets and personally guard me? Same questions for mayors and barons.

Welp, that's all the questions I can think of right now. I'll be sure the have more later.


6/26/2017 1:37:47 PM #1

First welcome to the community shu216! These are some very good questions and I personally would love to hear the answers as well.

Difficulty is right now if answers to them existed they would likely fall under the NDA as items like this will be revisited, tested, refined and tested again throughout the alpha and likely beta as well.

6/26/2017 1:51:24 PM #2

As Malais said, great questions! That kind of thinking shows that if you do go ahead and pledge as a Count, you're going to be quite successful. :)

Several of these things - like techniques for gathering soldiers and conscription, the consequences of refusing military service, and the nightmare of military logistics will likely lie on the shoulders of the players and especially the monarchy. The technical difficulty of representing large scale battles is something I'm sure the Dev team are likely hard at work as we speak.

We can't give you definitive answers - once those are available for general publication, you won't have to ask, they'll be available for all to see! In the mean time, make notes of your questions, save them up, and ask the devs at the next open Q&A!

I'm sure that our bombastic and ever so curious and inventive community will be happy to speculate their hearts out over this, however, especially over such specific and juicy questions :)


Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

6/26/2017 6:24:46 PM #3

1) Are there consequences for your average farmer not answering a call to arms? How would you even know if he didn't come? Could you pay a lump sum to get out of military service? Does everyone that is conscripted have to sign a contract? If two kingdoms go to war and you really think about it, it's an absolute nightmare logistically speaking. You have to gather the troops, mass supplies, be able to move those troops and supplies across a hostile land while most likely under constant harassment. I would suspect a kingdom would lose a lot of soldiers and supplies on their campaign. How would desertion work? Are there any game mechanics tied to this or is it all player driven? Meaning if someone deserts, is there a way for them to be flagged as a criminal?

2) Also all of the questions above apply to NPC's and OPC's. How do they interact with all of this?

3) Lets say i'm a count and I have an average amount of land and a average amount of inhabitants. How many soldiers could I expect to realistically raise for a planned offensive war? Also in my average city as a count how many guards could I expect to patrol my streets and personally guard me? Same questions for mayors and barons.

For these, we can do some logicks.

1) The consequences would vary from county to county, or duchy or kingdom depending on how laws are set up. Maybe merchants and smiths are exempt and can pay their way out in exchange for supplying the army with something. Same thing with a lump sum, you pay to get out of it, but at a certain point, you may run out of mercenaries and need more soldiers.

If you're a smart count, I would make sure you a) have militias regardless of if you are on the border or not and b) keep lists of their names, towns, occupations etc. and simply do roll calls. Otherwise it would be to expensive for you top have people hired to make sure all the militias muster completely.

The contract would likely be implicit, we all have obligations to our lords. Unless you set up your law to require a specific contract, guaranteeing pay or equipment etc. for a militia or conscript.

Wars are indeed a logistical nightmare, most have been won or lost due to that fact.

Desertion would be player driven, coming back to the implicit or explicit contract. As count, you would be able to flag deserters as criminals the same way as anyone else who breaks a law. Keeping track of militia/conscripts members and their statuses (KIA, MIA, etc.) would also help.

2) NPCs and OPCs act similarly, but NPCs are very different from OPCs. We'll have to wait and see, but most contracts are do this in exchange for this. So OPCs may be able to muster or something like that if prompted. But we'll have to wait for testing on that.

3) If it's a planned Offensive it would depend on your preparations. But I would, upon launch, maybe do a census, figure out how many people you have, where they work etc. and ask employers the minimum amount of people they need to run their shops etc. And go from there. As for guards, the town guards and your personal guards are likely different groups unless you keep them the same. But that simply depends on how many you hire/can afford. As a count, probably more than a Baron or Mayor, who may simple have a bodyguard or two.


6/26/2017 7:29:36 PM #4

There are kind of two parts to answering your questions it seems, what you can do and then how you can do it. We know the answer to the what, we just aren't 100% on what tools we'll have for the how.

How will large scale battles work? Currently we don't know they haven't tested that or have any concrete data to prove we can have 100+ player fights. However Spatial OS and other technologies seem to be the answer to this. To be safe, though, we don't know.

From what I know of this game, your questions about what you can do to raise an army is limited mostly by your imagination. You can send messengers in game, you can have a discord chat out of game to message your mayors, you can post on a board looking for soldiers. As other players have mentioned you can maintain a militia or have dedicated troops year round paid by your county taxes. All of these plans have different costs and benefits that you as a count will have to weigh and decide on. Again, as far as I know, almost any of these plans can be completed with contracts, be them implicit or explicit but unfortunately we have no concrete examples yet of this. So the way you set up your war efforts is entirely guided by your imagination.

The same applies to consequences, the consequences are whatever you set as a count so long as their actions break a contract be it implicit or explicit. If you set the implicit contract to be in times of war all citizens must join the army you can do that (likely) but you will also have very few citizens aside from soldiers and your county will likely fail. It will again be up to you to find a balance that works for your county. The versatility of contracts seems to make anything possible and leaves the mechanics largely in player hands. If they will have specific mechanics in place we aren't sure of what they will be but according to what I have heard the contract system and some creativity are your main tools.

Hope this helps.


Aspiring Lumberjack, NA-W