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Paths of Civilization

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Academia Nut said:
It will take a year or two before the levies can be called up and trained, thus those crossbows are sitting in storehouses where they can't be used. This is what will be happening to the guys first on the scene.



You found olives millennia ago. You eat them and their oil at such a prodigious rate that there is nothing left for export.

You have a few incenses, but the Khem are the biggest consumers, satisfied their internal market long before you met them, and the People are a bit leery of incense. They often consider it a way of disguising poor hygiene. They prefer living plants with insect repellent properties.
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Hmm, we need to do more training, if levies take a year to call up.
That's way too slow.

We ought to test effectiveness by calling a drill every 5 years or so, until we can pull up people within a week.
And keep them all pre-trained via National service (all 18 year old are compulsory trained in the crossbow before released)

Didn't we take the choice for training draftees occasionally in the reform?
 
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2xMachina said:
Hmm, we need to do more training, if levies take a year to call up.
That's way too slow.

We ought to test effectiveness by calling a drill every 5 years or so, until we can pull up people within a week.
And keep them all pre-trained via National service (all 18 year old are compulsory trained in the crossbow before released)
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Military reserve is an advanced concept and required a boatload of money. Still something to think about if we're filthy rich enough to try to implement such a system.
 
2xMachina said:
Hmm, we need to do more training, if levies take a year to call up.
That's way too slow.

We ought to test effectiveness by calling a drill every 5 years or so, until we can pull up people within a week.
And keep them all pre-trained via National service (all 18 year old are compulsory trained in the crossbow before released)
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We already have something similar from our Yeomen. It's just that there is only so many Yeomen that we can support at a time, even with our insane econ score.

Levies take so long because it is calling up pretty much every man that can hold a sword, giving him enough training to survive, and then marching them to the front.

If we did cut out the training, we could save a lot of time, yes. But it would require us spending a truly absurd amount of resources to train everyone to a standard good enough to send them out with only a refresher course.
 
Kiba said:
Military reserve is an advanced concept and required a boatload of money. Still something to think about if we're filthy rich enough to try to implement such a system.
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Hmm, I'm not saying a reserve.
But... just training. Short course on crossbow and usage, once in a lifetime.

Do drills to see who & how fast they respond. They don't even need to do anything. Just come and report (and get free lunch I suppose). Maybe a short test on crossbow usage (shoot a bolt). If they fail, hold them for refresher training (1 day)

Wouldn't even disrupt their daily lives much (what's a day in every 5 years?). And incentivizes them to remember their training
 
I don't know if this has been said in the past dozen pages (probably), but if we have a Willow tree analog, we're looking at painkillers if we push investment hard. Has my vote, for sure.
 
DragonParadox said:
They have slaves to do the dirty work.
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Slaves cost money, too, though.

You need to buy them, you need to feed them and generally take care lest they die and your investment is gone. Depending on how badly you treat them, they also need guards.

They are also more vulnerable to diseases as they are rarely treated well and they currently live next to the regions biggest bioweapon lab.

There are also the social consequences as the poor compete with the slaves and are rather angry.

And going by ancient greece, slaveholding societies didn't have much respect for artisans as they worked closely with slaves and quite a few were slaves as well. Which makes it a bit weird that the slaveholding societies next to us even care about the Artisan games.
 
2xMachina said:
Hmm, I'm not saying a reserve.
But... just training. Short course on crossbow and usage, once in a lifetime.

Do drills to see who & how fast they respond. They don't even need to do anything. Just come and report (and get free lunch I suppose). Maybe a short test on crossbow usage (shoot a bolt). If they fail, hold them for refresher training (1 day)

Wouldn't even disrupt their daily lives much (what's a day in every 5 years?). And incentivizes them to remember their training
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Pretty sure that takes four to five weeks top.

The biggest challenge is instilling disciplines in those levies, which will be crucial in fighting horse nomads. That is, how to march, how to build a camp, being able to endure a lot of pain for your regiment, and so forth.

These are worth more than knowing how to use crossbows and fire on command. It's being able to fire on command in the face of terrifying cavalry that's important.
 
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2xMachina said:
Hmm, I'm not saying a reserve.
But... just training. Short course on crossbow and usage, once in a lifetime.

Do drills to see who & how fast they respond. They don't even need to do anything. Just come and report (and get free lunch I suppose). Maybe a short test on crossbow usage (shoot a bolt). If they fail, hold them for refresher training (1 day)

Wouldn't even disrupt their daily lives much (what's a day in every 5 years?). And incentivizes them to remember their training
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How do you imagine this replacing a season of training...? And we have a standing professional army for immediate engagement; if we need stronger forces for immediate engagement then we should just expand that.
 
Citino said:
We already have something similar from our Yeomen. It's just that there is only so many Yeomen that we can support at a time, even with our insane econ score.

Levies take so long because it is calling up pretty much every man that can hold a sword, giving him enough training to survive, and then marching them to the front.

If we did cut out the training, we could save a lot of time, yes. But it would require us spending a truly absurd amount of resources to train everyone to a standard good enough to send them out with only a refresher course.
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Actually, Raising Army and then Retraining it should have that effect. But it also militarizes our population quite a bit. OTOH, it means we are much more able to resist attack as the city populations aren't just panicky civilians, but also trained warriors that presumably have some discipline.
 
2xMachina said:
Hmm, I'm not saying a reserve.
But... just training. Short course on crossbow and usage, once in a lifetime.

Do drills to see who & how fast they respond. They don't even need to do anything. Just come and report (and get free lunch I suppose). Maybe a short test on crossbow usage (shoot a bolt). If they fail, hold them for refresher training (1 day)

Wouldn't even disrupt their daily lives much (what's a day in every 5 years?). And incentivizes them to remember their training
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You're massively underestimating how much time it takes to train someone. Crossbows are fairly easy, but a spear or sword can take years to get even semi-competent in its use. And marching, formations, all that stuff? Whelp.

And if the skills aren't used, they will rust. So either you have to pay for the men to take a day off and train (So pay ~5,000,000 people per year to do nothing productive) or you just hope that the time lost won't kill you.

Our method is the only sane one, unless we are willing to invest main turn actions in doing this.
 
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[x] [Inno] Looks important, invest heavily (-3 Wealth, -3 Mysticism, -1 Tech, ???)
[x] [AG] They may join (Open games, ???)
[x] [Policy] Switch to Mass Levy
[x] [Trade] Push the guilds to the limit to meet demands (Trade Tech for Wealth, up to 5 per phase, to attempt to top up Wealth)

[x] [Kick] 1 Stability, 2 Temp Econ damage
 
At least for the cities it would be doable to create crossbow shooting clubs like they did for the city militias of the holy roman empire, they had clubs and competitions for crossbowmen.
 
2xMachina said:
We ought to test effectiveness by calling a drill every 5 years or so, until we can pull up people within a week.
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A week? That's absolutely insane. Full mobilization would be hard to achieve in a week today, forget classical age.

You understand that Levy requires us to collect hundreds of thousand, up to a million men, organize them all, find weaponry, munitions and spare parts for them, get them some uniform, organize logistics to keep them clothed and fed, coordinate with all levels of government to make sure things keep working for years until some return, make sure they still remember how to use weapons, find enough NCO's to have squads, find enough officers to have companies, make sure all those people won't run away or rebel, keep them from killing each other while everything else organizes, and all that with classical age communication in the whole empire, and only then you move them, which is a story unto itself.

Honestly, an year or two is pretty good.
 
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George said:
How do you imagine this replacing a season of training...? And we have a standing professional army for immediate engagement; if we need stronger forces for immediate engagement then we should just expand that.
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Hmm, I'm thinking boots on the ground, and saturation fire.
Don't care about anything else.

Sure, higher loss.
But an army that arrives 1 year later, is an army that arrived 1 year too late.
 
DakkaMania said:
Which makes it a bit weird that the slaveholding societies next to us even care about the Artisan games.
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Not really. Warriors are quite appreciative of artisan innovations, since having the sharpest, most badass sword you can is pretty nice for a warrior prince.

It's just that the profession of an Artisan itself seems to be 'lower' than the warrior classes. They've probably been eyeing the competition for quite a while, since even if it doesn't get them some of the more esoteric stuff we make, better iron or improved sword designs are a very tempting offer for them.
 
Citino said:
Not really. Warriors are quite appreciative of artisan innovations, since having the sharpest, most badass sword you can is pretty nice for a warrior prince.

It's just that the profession of an Artisan itself seems to be 'lower' than the warrior classes. They've probably been eyeing the competition for quite a while, since even if it doesn't get them some of the more esoteric stuff we make, better iron or improved sword designs are a very tempting offer for them.
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They are also starting see Artisan competition as a prestige thing, not just something to scoff at as something underneath you.
 
EWilanO said:
Yes but at least you could spend time drilling people instead having to do basic weapon handling training.
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If we wanted to have a semi-trained militia we probably shouldn't have gone with the mass levy idea and ignored the yeomen so much. Sure we can change that but it seems to me like a very massive military reform at a time we are otherwise quite busy.
 
Kiba said:
They are also starting see Artisan competition as a prestige thing, not just something to scoff at as something underneath you.
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Yep. We connected our Games with the Artisan Games, so over time other people started to see them connected as well.

It helps that we've always had an edge in tech over most other polities, so us not letting them in became a sign of our power and skill.

It's part of why I'm personally quite happy with the chance to share the Games with others. This will push them to focus a bit more on tech themselves, and since we have ties to these other nations, a lot of that tech will filter back into us over time.

The extra innovation rolls are great, but the long term impacts could be pretty damn interesting. If we weren't at war, I'd be pushing the subsidized Games so hard right now. The chance for other civs to start building their own Artisan Games? Yes plz.
Erandil said:
If we wanted to have a semi-trained militia we probably shouldn't have gone with the mass levy idea and ignored the yeomen so much. Sure we can change that but it seems to me like a very massive military reform at a time we are otherwise quite busy.
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Yeomen are a great source of readily trained soldiers, but they are also much harder to gather up in large numbers than the urban poor, I believe. (Yeomen are spread throughout the countryside, so sending out the call and then waiting for them takes forever. The Urban poor are all gathered together in loke a dozen spots, which can then be turned into staging areas, which means you can cut down a lot on the wait time).
 
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2xMachina said:
Hmm, I'm thinking boots on the ground, and saturation fire.
Don't care about anything else.

Sure, higher loss.
But an army that arrives 1 year later, is an army that arrived 1 year too late.
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Well, this one year is a massive improvement over what we had before and is far better than what others have for raising troops during war. Are you basing it being not good enough on a study of iron age warfare?
 
Kiba said:
That may be so, but black soil still hadn't spread everywhere.
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Mostly because you know, if you had a lot of slaves, why waste their time making black soil when you could grab extra land, extra slaves and put them on THAT? Black Soil to everyone else is that weird clean freak Ymaryn practice of burning their shit with perfectly good fuel for no reason because their gods think being dirty is unholy.
Artemis said:
I don't know if this has been said in the past dozen pages (probably), but if we have a Willow tree analog, we're looking at painkillers if we push investment hard. Has my vote, for sure.
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We have opium. We already have painkillers. Willow bark is more for the anti pyretic qualities, which were listed amongst the treatments attempted during the Horseman Plague.
 
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