Advice on Campaign

[Blind Mapmaker]

City Stats also has a way of accounting for how many troops a city can maintain (depending on Control Rating). You could probably expand those rules to a kingdom.

Logistics-wise you can probably dispense with much of the transport-related logistics if you are at peace and your troops are stationed in major cities. If you have remote fortresses then you still need to provide for them. In any case, no logistics in peace-time only works if you rely on a citizens' militia.

As for mapping tools, there is AutoRealm (link). It produces workable results and can measure distances. It's not as nice as the Campaign Cartographer, but it's free, works with older machines, easy to learn and does the job unless you want to frame your campaign map and put it on the wall.

[Aigol]

So for a medieval type world would the TL be 3 or 4, 4 includes firearms but is that more of a late TL 4 thing? I was wondering cause looking through a frineds copy of low tech I found that the PLate armor you think of knights wearing is a TL 4 item.

[trooper6]

Is AutoRealm Mac compatible?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Aigol

So for a medieval type world would the TL be 3 or 4, 4 includes firearms but is that more of a late TL 4 thing? I was wondering cause looking through a frineds copy of low tech I found that the PLate armor you think of knights wearing is a TL 4 item.

Europe reached TL4 while still in the late medieval period, but was solidly TL3 through the height of the era. However, it should be noted that guns and plate armor developed at around the same time (through the 14th and 15th centuries). Contrary to popular perception, the gun didn't make armor immediately obsolete.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Is AutoRealm Mac compatible?

Nope, but apparently it runs fine under Linux if you use Wine, so maybe the compatibility tools on a Mac can get it to run, too. Sorry, but I really don't know much about Macs. AutoRealm is a lot less demanding than Campaign Cartographer, though.

[Aigol]

At what point do lines of men with guns begin to replace the armored combat?

Somewhere in the middle its pikemen paired with riflemen right?

[Blind Mapmaker]

The turning point is the Thirty Years War. Until then the tercio, a mixed formation of pikemen and riflemen (not really rifles actually, but you get the point), ruled the field. The number of pikemen in the tercio diminished continually, though.

Armour in general, also decreased from the 16th century onwards, with cavalry retaining it the longest.

[DanHoward]

Armour increased in the 16th century since this is when munitions plate started to take off. It starts to decline in the middle of the 17th century.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Dang, I meant 17th century. This kind of number confusion is going to cost me one day.

[Witchking]

Also a note for the OP...

If you are using European History as a model...

"Professional" Armies more or less dissapeared historically from mid 5th century to mid 17th century...roughly the Fall of Rome (the legions) til the Thirty Years War (Gustavous Adolphus).

In that period you are really looking at nobles with warbands...supplementing with Mercinary Companies and Peasant Levies in times of War...

Professional Logistics and dedicated Logistic troops were still being struggled with well into the 19th Century...the French failure with it was a big reason they lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

So usually "War" lasted from when the mud dried until the peasants had to take the harvest in...(in the 450-1630 period)

just my 2 coppers...