DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement -- the history discussion

[Gilgamensch]

Hi CoT,

I think we started off when I made some comments about the maintenance cost. I just threw in some comments to make people re-think or think the position of logistics (no offense ment) and suddenly Locutus and me were in this discussion.

Funny enough E and me (who original posted the idea for support) 'agreed' to make changes just to the cost and using the slider

Hey, that's life sometimes

And your idea of the viking way of settling:

Sounds cool, you have some more? Maybe we shall pass them into laws for our politicians !!!!!!!! Me thinks would settle a lot of disputes quick...........

For the mounted units: I think that is even in the original version (patch)

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch

Sorry, typo, ment 50k

Should have gotten clear out of the context by the way.

Now that makes a lot more sense. No, it was not clear at all from the context, you were painting the picture of a few farmers fighting over an apple tree, a la Asterix & Obelix...

Going back to Troja: Are you just making fun of yourself?

One of many possible links:
in English

And poorly documentated...... So anything which isn't kept on video you disregard? Or what hasn't been written by the Romans (which by the way overstated figures as well)?

We know the city of Troy existed, that's (more lor less) a historical fact. But that doesn't mean that everything else Homer claimed regarding the city and the Trojan War was even remotely accurate. The stories of Troy were passed down orally from generation to generation and contain a lot of exaggerated and fictional things: cyclopses, giants, witches, sirens, the underworld, etc. Why would any of the information about the war itself be more accurate? Especially considering the Greek were renowned for exaggerating: they claimed the Persians had an army of 3 million(!) at Plataea and Alexander the Great fought armies of 2 million men or more as well. The only source about the Trojan War we have is Homer's work (and we don't even know for sure if Homer even existed!), we cannot draw any conclusions solely based on that. Much of it may have been true, much may not have, we simply don't know.

If you can show me any real evidence that 3,000 (or any other number of) men fought at Troy, I'd love to see it 'cause that would be news for me (and I love learning new stuff). But to the best of my knowledge, we don't even know with 100% certainty if there was ever a Trojan War at all, much less how many people were involved in it.

So this would mean for you 2 * 12 stacks, one for each side. And that would mean transfered to CTP2 that ONE army would be bigger than any city you have at this time. (Size 10 city?, without aqueduct and so on?????)

That just depends on game balance. The numbers for cities as they stand don't make any sense: the largest cities in the ancient world (Athens, Rome, Carthage, Antioch, Ephesus, Constantinople, Alexandria, etc) had populations ranging from some 200,000 to 1,000,000 citizens. In CtP terms, that means cities of 20-100 in size. Considering the max-size of cities in the unmodded game is 60 and you normally can't reach that number before the modern age, that doesn't make sense. Modern age cities of the real world number into the millions: that would mean a city like present-day Paris (2,1 million inhabitants) would have to be size 210 or so in CtP2!

But still your suggestion doesn't sound too far off: a decent sized imperial army in Classical times was somewhere between 40k and 100k men large, which is also the size of the larger cities of those times. As I said the really large cities could easily have populations in the hundreds of thousands, but ordinary cities had populations of maybe 10-30k in Europe and up to 50k in Asia.

Now show me how you want to support your figures

It's not possible to do this in CtP: the city population model is way off as I noted. Also, CtP only models city population, where the land was actually being worked by the rural population, which isn't modeled at all in the game. Also, your assumptions that 40% of the population doesn't contribute to the work force at all is non-sense. In post-industrial Europe perhaps, but especially on the countryside, women and older children were an important part of the work force in most cultures (and still are today). These kinds of calculations are purely based on fantasy. I would rather look at what real armies looked like in the past than at what a city in CtP2 could theoretically support.

If I take your figures, the ancient empires would have had millions of citizens, working with modern/nowadays techniques to support those armies.

The Roman empire had some 60 million inhabitants in 300 AD and a total size of their army was around this time some 60 legions: at 6-7k per legion that's some 400k soldiers. That's not counting auxiliaries and the like and non-combat support troops, so their total army size was likely some 600,000 men (rough estimate), or 1% of the total population.

For Troja: 200 for transporting purpose of people, you still have to take ships for food/spares and so on. Which you shall have taken into account as well. Their logistics was to have everything with them. They didn't ship afterwards.........Jesus...............

How do you know any of this? Where are the accounts that say they only traveled once? Surely if the siege lasted 10 years as the story tells us, they would have needed reinforcements and supplies at some point? Even with a 1,000 ships you can't bring 10 years worth of supplies for a whole army (no matter what size) with you -- and that's assuming you know in advance the war will take that long. What historical or archeological sources do you have to back any of those claims up?

So taking one game where it works, proofs it works........

It proves it CAN work, it's not by defintion doomed to fail.

In most battles? That were just the famous ones.

You want me to list some less famous battles? How about Cunaxa: 40k vs 50k, Tigranocerta: 23k vs 260k? (exact number may be propaganda, but the Romans were fastly outnumbered), Raphia: 62k vs 70k, Chaeronea: 30k vs 22k, Hydapses: 30k vs 35k, Mons Graupius: 30k vs 30k. I could go on for a long time...

Just to remind you: The reason why they build the Limes in Scottland and against the barbarians, was just involving 10k respectivly 20K 'armies'. Both of them were defeated by far less then 1k enemies. But those battles they hardly ever mentioned.

20,000 men defeated by 'far less than 1k' -- that means 100-200 men at most. Which battles were those exactly (place, year), if I may ask? Victory ratios of 10:1 were not unknown, but usually with bigger absolute number and usually it involved battle-hardened veterans fighting armed peasants. From the top of my head I know of one example in Britain: the defeat of Boudicca at the battle of Verulamium (61 AD), where an uknown number of Britons (probably at least 100k) was defeated by a some 10-15k of Roman legionaires. The number of Romans was fairly low here, but they were so superior they simply didn't need more, as as is obvious by the outcome (80k Britons dead, less than 1k Romans casualties). But even then, that's still 10,000 Roman soldiers, not 500 or even less.

So again, what is your point?

My point is that armies are sizeable units of thousands of men, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands. Far too many to move halfway across the planet and still maintain reliable lines of supply.

And now one of your best jokes

My remark was about the scale of the battles, not their purpose. You were suggestion (due to typos or otherwise) that CtP battles were minor quarrels of a few dozen men fighting over a piece of meat or an apple tree. Had that indeed been your intention, you you're the one to get real... otherwise there was just a mix up and no harm's done

[Locutus]

CoT,

Yes, it may seem like pointless bickering to most, but historical arguments are educational and fun! I love doing it, I used to hang out in the Civ3 forums even though I hated the game, solely to discuss history with the history buffs there. We need more of those in this forum as well Especially since Markos doesn't allow a seperate History forum like on CFC

[child of Thor]

well as long as you can both share a beer at the end of it

It was getting a bit rabid i think - we are a smallish(compared to Civ2/3) bunch of guys that love CTP2, so i just dont like to see us getting like the OT forum , we usually behave better than that

thats all

maybe i'm just not used to seeing it over here.....(ref: the F***ing kinda thing etc).

But Historical discussion is - I guess its got to go somewhere?

[Gilgamensch]

Let's start with the easy one:

My remark was about the scale of the battles, not their purpose. You were suggestion (due to typos or otherwise) that CtP battles were minor quarrels of a few dozen men fighting over a piece of meat or an apple tree. Had that indeed been your intention, you you're the one to get real... otherwise there was just a mix up and no harm's done

OK, peace.. looks like misunderstanding....

The reason for the limes were because they lost 10k/20k in those battles against ~900/~700 people (which is still far less than 1k ). The first one was against the picts(sp?) meaning the scotts and the second the battle in the teutonian forest, described both by roman writers. One of the biggest punishments after those was to go on patrol in this areas, as it meant death. The romans were so afraid off those two 'countries' that they invested a sh*tload of resources in building the limes. Actually the scottish one is around (IIRC) 900 miles long the 'german' (there was no germany at this time, just the 'barbarians') one around 2000 km.

Now that makes a lot more sense. No, it was not clear at all from the context, you were painting the picture of a few farmers fighting over an apple tree, a la Asterix & Obelix...

Again: Sorry for the typo.....let's rest this one ;-)

Also, your assumptions that 40% of the population doesn't contribute to the work force at all is non-sense.

re-read what I posted, I used 1/3 of the WHOLE population for farming use, meaning INCLUDING woman and small kids!!!!!!!

Only afterwards for the rest I excluded them.

What historical or archeological sources do you have to back any of those claims up?

Follow some of the links of the link I provided, there you can find some information (which is including some speculation) about it. I do agree that a lot might be pure speculation, but one reason why homer is being seen more serious nowadays is, that they found troja, so it existed where he placed it, which really doesn't match a fary-tale, or?

For the shipping, for sure they had afterwards supplies going on, but not large scale. Again this is for you maybe just speculation, but at those time they didn't record everything, which means that a lot has to be 'calculated' using other figures to compare. Also a lot of stuff has been accederated(sp?, being a bit tired) by any of the writers.

Battles: interresting that you use again (or only) figures of roman battles. As I said before, a lot of those numbers are also not so trust-worthy. But suddenly the figures are far below 100k. And that are figures which I can trust more.

Coming back to the numbers:
For me a 100k army shall not be compared to one 12 stack, it is already more like 10 * 12 stacks. Reason: Then we wouldn't have anything to compare a single unit to. It is hard to find the equivilant but me thinks you put the numbers to high. And I think that's the only point were we really disagree

One thing I never liked with the roman figures: They never included or specified the number of support included in there. In only a few cases it has been done. So me thinks, there was also some 'propaganda' involved at this time. Another thing I never liked: As the winner is writing the history, were those armies really armies or not just some peasants armed with clubs and similar..........

for city sizes: IIRC in CTP they were 'exponential', or? Which would make far more sense, as you kind of described with a 210-size city.

Actually like for Egypt, or better to say the beginning of Egypt, the figures being given for the army sizes (complete!!!!) were around 10k max. The struggle of joining what was later Egypt, when there were just city-states.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch

And your idea of the viking way of settling:

Sounds cool, you have some more? Maybe we shall pass them into laws for our politicians !!!!!!!! Me thinks would settle a lot of disputes quick...........

Ok well heres another useful tip - this one for women

In the 'olden' days a women couldn't easily get a divorce, but being reasonable people(scandinavians) there was one get out clause for the distressed wife.

If she made her husband a tunic/jumper that had a really low neckline - so that his nipples could be seen, then she would manouvre her husband into having to divorce her - for the embarassment she had caused him in front of his contemparies.

[Gilgamensch]

In the 'olden' days a women couldn't easily get a divorce, but being reasonable people(scandinavians) there was one get out clause for the distressed wife.

If she made her husband a tunic/jumper that had a really low neckline - so that his nipples could be seen, then she would manouvre her husband into having to divorce her - for the embarassment she had caused him in front of his contemparies.

I had to reread it twice, first I read that her nibbles would be seen Or is just my fantasy

But hwat if he still didn't want to get divorced, she made the neckline even lower Could have caused a lot of distress for a possible new wife.............

[child of Thor]

Well its been a while since i studies viking law(like 1000 years!), but i think she only had to make it low enough to expose her husbands nipples.

He was then honour bound(and that was when honour meant something) to divorce her(I guess even if he liked showing his nipples to his freinds!?). I dont think i read an account of it having to get lower.

It always made me laugh this one - it was a weird way fo getting around all the social constrictions of the time, and provided a nicely women respectful loop hole.

It was used mostly by women to get out of abusive marrages. But there was the odd account of lustfull women using it when they got bored of their husbands!!

Still it was a rare occurance - the stigma attached to it was quite real and both parties would come under some heavy unwelcome scruitiny within their community(I can imagine the gossip!).

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by Locutus
CoT,

Yes, it may seem like pointless bickering to most, but historical arguments are educational and fun! I love doing it, I used to hang out in the Civ3 forums even though I hated the game, solely to discuss history with the history buffs there. We need more of those in this forum as well Especially since Markos doesn't allow a seperate History forum like on CFC

Just saw this reply, slipped through the review.........

And yes I like it as well But maybe we shall move it into a new thread?

EDIT: I had already had some discussion with Locutus via ICQ which if you would see them would see 'bitter', but it isn't meant like this

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
The reason for the limes were because they lost 10k/20k in those battles against ~900/~700 people (which is still far less than 1k ). The first one was against the picts(sp?) meaning the scotts

No, the Romans never lost any major battles against the Picts. In fact, there were two major battles between the Romans and the Caledonians (as the Romans called all people who lived in Scotland, both Picts and others) and the Romans won both battles decisively. The reason for building the wall was that the Romans realized they could never pacify the Caledonians and have them accept the Roman way of life. They only way to keep them in check would be by violent oppression, and that was not what they wanted. They knew they'd always have to surpress revolt after revolt, which would consume huge amounts of resources and menpower.

So they just built the wall to form a barrier between those Britons that were receptive to the Roman way of life and those who weren't. They didn't build it to protect their own armies, who were not the least bit threatened by the locals (as the later rebellion of Boudicca proved), but to keep the peace and allow for the peace and stability in the rest of Britain (which was far more profitable than constant war and rebellion).

and the second the battle in the teutonian forest

Accusing me of picking exceptional battles and then doing the same thing yourself?

That was a very exceptional event, the biggest humiliation and defeat in the history of Rome -- it was never repeated. One can only respect the cunningness of Arminius (leader the Germans), but it was a unique event that stands on its own, it's not representative for battles of that time.

BTW, I'm curious where you got the number of 700-900 men? (Which is NOT far less than 1k, just a few less ) I've never seen reliable numbers on how many Germans were involved, to the best of my knowledge that's not known. Tacitus doesn't seem to mention it, unless I missed it, and he's the only Roman to describe the battle AFAIK.

Follow some of the links of the link I provided, there you can find some information (which is including some speculation) about it.

I could find some info on the city of Troy itself on that site, but nothing regarding the war. If I'm missing anything, please post a more specific link.

but at those time they didn't record everything

In fact, they recorded nothing. There was only the oral story, which wasn't recorded in writing until centuries later. Any information we have that's even remotely reliable will have to come from archeological research.

Battles: interresting that you use again (or only) figures of roman battles.

No, I thought you might think that. The battle of Tigranocerta was the only one of two battles in that list involving Romans and I picked it because it was one of the most obscure Roman campaigns: the one against the Armenians. The other 'Roman' battle is Mons Graupius, where Roman allies and auxiliaries (not even the Romans themselves) defeated the Picts you mentioned earlier.

The remaining battles are Persians vs Persians, Syrians vs Egyptians, Macedonians vs Greeks and Greeks vs Indians. I considered adding a Chinese battle or two but those tended to involve huge numbers of troops, which I knew would only get you upset again about the 'unreliable and exceptional' numbers

As I said before, a lot of those numbers are also not so trust-worthy. But suddenly the figures are far below 100k. And that are figures which I can trust more.

I deliberately picked battles with smaller numbers not to upset you too much But you'll note that the total number of combatants still ranges from 60k to 300k+, high numbers compared to what you've been proposing as 'normal'.

For me a 100k army shall not be compared to one 12 stack, it is already more like 10 * 12 stacks.

That would mean that the equivalent of the Roman empire in 300 AD in CtP2 would have a total military size of some 60 12-stacks or 720 units. That's a bit much!

My proposal was and is that a single unit represents between 1-10k men. That comes down 60-120 units or 10-20 full stacks total for the total size of a large ancient age empire in CtP2, which may even be a tad high (but realistic if you realize this includes city garrisons and militias and the like as part of the army).

But you are right, it's hard to really translate as the CtP model simply isn't realistic enough and there are far too many factors that play a part.

One thing I never liked with the roman figures: They never included or specified the number of support included in there. In only a few cases it has been done. So me thinks, there was also some 'propaganda' involved at this time.

The composition of Roman armies is well known and documented. Modern sources for Roman army sizes (the kind of numbers I'm listing here) are usually compensated for any kind of propaganda.

Another thing I never liked: As the winner is writing the history, were those armies really armies or not just some peasants armed with clubs and similar..........

Yes, the winner writes the history and that leads to some unreliable numbers but as I noted before, the numbers I posted here are all conservative estimates, the minimum amounts so to speak. And if anything, the Romans and Greeks downplayed the quality of their enemies rather than exaggerated them, to show the 'home audience' how barbaric they were. Only their numbers were exagerrated.

for city sizes: IIRC in CTP they were 'exponential', or?

In Civ they were, in CtP1 I don't know but in CtP2 they are not. Which is exactly why I feel that system is broken.

Actually like for Egypt, or better to say the beginning of Egypt, the figures being given for the army sizes (complete!!!!) were around 10k max. The struggle of joining what was later Egypt, when there were just city-states.

When you're talking pre-dynastic Egypt, you're probably right (probably the numbers were even lower), but we're talking about villages fighting villages there. In pharaoic Egypt -- the Egypt we model in Civ -- the army was usually some 4 divisions large as I mentioned earlier: some 20k men (not counting allies and auxiliaries).

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by Locutus


No, the Romans .....................

I haven't got so much time today and on the weekend I hardly be online, driving you know where

If you don't mind we continue next week and maybe we shall open a new threat for it?

Get's a bit in the way of the other discussion

[Locutus]

This discussion was split off from this thread. The split may lead to some confusing comments and disrupted discussion, but overall should clean both threads up.

[Gilgamensch]

Vor the battle of Varus:

In the moment I only found some German webpages:

extract for the roman side:
Im Jahre 9 n.Chr. vernichteten unter der Führung des cheruskischen Adeligen und römischen Bürgers Arminius rheinwesergermanische Stammesverbände (Cherusker, Brukterer, Marser, Chatten) das unter dem Oberbefehl des Varus stehende Heer von insgesamt 3 Legionen, 3 Alen/Reitereinheiten und 6 Kohorten/Infanterieeinheiten sowie den zugehörigen Troß.

link

this link is containing the sources. I'll try to dig up more.

If anyone needs a translation, please let me know and I try to translate.

[Locutus]

Yes, what Roman troops were involved is well documented (the 3 legions were Legions XVII, XVIII and XIX IIRC), it's the Germanic troops I'd be interested in. Aside from a few tribe names (which are indeed mentioned here as well), I've never seen anything concrete about them.

[Gilgamensch]

Locutus,

be patient..............I am trying to find them.............I know I read it somewhere.........but long time ago..........

Don't forget it also included
3 Alen/Reitereinheiten und 6 Kohorten/Infanterieeinheiten plus support