Using mass combat

[Aneirin]

Hello there. i was looking at mass combat and it looks a lot of fun (the commanding bit) although I am having difficulty with the raising bit.

Most of the time it can be GM fiat, PC's come to help and the army has that much...but I was planning to offer PC's the opportunity to make their own army.

And then I came across the cost to raise and maintain. One would need to be a multi millionaire to raise a modest force.

Thinking back to feudal times, a lord would have a few knights (maybe one element of heavy cavalry) and (as per the feudal modifier) would outfit them and they would work for free for a couple of months. The Lord may also have some soliders himself, freemen or yeomen that work as soliders or mercenaries (I am a little confused as to where the vast majority of soldiers come from)

Alas my lack of knowledge of feudal warfare starts to show. The knights are under a responsibility to provide soldiers (medium or heavy infantry), and knights were wealthy, but they would have problems raising more than a few elements.

Though this may be a problem of scale. Movies may have lead me to beleive engagements involved many more people than they actually did.

Has anyone run a game where people hire and maintain their own troops and how did you manage it?

[Aneirin]

One thing I wouldn't mind knowing is (a very rough question dependant on time) is how many lords were there per knights, and how many soliders per knights.

I.e., your 'average' lord would have 12 knights (and maybe 5 household knights)

Each landed knight could have 100 soilders.

(N.B. above figures plucked from thin air)

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Aneirin

One thing I wouldn't mind knowing is (a very rough question dependant on time) is how many lords were there per knights, and how many soliders per knights.

I.e., your 'average' lord would have 12 knights (and maybe 5 household knights)

Each landed knight could have 100 soilders.

(N.B. above figures plucked from thin air)

The landed knight numbers are way off. I can tell you that now.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Aneirin

Has anyone run a game where people hire and maintain their own troops and how did you manage it?

By having them be multimillionaires. The cost of warriors, and the logistics required to have and use warriors, is absolutely one of the biggest reasons why they didn't have more wars -- no one could afford them!

[Aneirin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The landed knight numbers are way off. I can tell you that now.

Thought so! Any more accurate ideas (just rough ones)

Found tis off the internet, but no source, but sounds tempting...

The respectful term "lord" refers to anyone at any rank in the feudal system who has vassals of his own - even the poorest knight might have a servant who would call him "lord".

The feudal system is based on all land being owned by the king or by the Church as an institution. The king allowed his earls to hold huge swathes of this land; they in tern allowed barons to hold land from them; the barons might have several lower-ranking knights holding parcels of land from them and all these "lords" (for every one of them was addressed as such) had peasants to do all the manual work who would be given small sections of land in return for rents and services.

So "lord" does not signify any particular level in this hierarchy - every nobleman at every level was a lord.

Each wealthy knight was assessed according to his wealth, property and the total area of lands he held - this was expressed as the "knight's fee". For example in 1135 the important knight Richard Basset held 184.25 carucates of land, which was assessed as being 15 knight's fees. In 1166 the Lincolnshire baron Lambert de Scoteny held 16.25 carucates of land, assessed at 10 knight's fees.

As part of their feudal obligations, Richard Basset was required to provided 15 fully-equipped knights and Lambert de Scoteny 10, or the financial equivalent, if called upon by the king. If they chose to pay money instead of providing the full quota of knights, this was called scutage (shield-money).

So the answer is that a "lord" at any level in the feudal hierarchy was assessed according to his land holdings and he might have 20 or more knight's fees - or just 1 (himself), but these could be just theoretical knights who were represented by a cash payment instead.
Related Answers:

[vicky_molokh]

Actually, not sure about Low-Tech, but at TL9 raising a squad of supersoldiers is extremely cheap compared to the cash you have to hand out for upgrading a character to a supersoldier (that's aside from the skills and salary, which are another story).

[JaJH]

I've been lurking on these forums for a while now, but this is the first thread I've noticed where I think I can add some insight as I've done a bit of research on this subject. So, I've joined up :)

I stumbled across this link a few months ago and found it to be pretty helpful in determining, say, how many men at arms a knight could support, what an average noble made, etc. http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

I know it's probably suspicious for a first time poster to be pasting links, so I've some pertinent information. Note that currency values vary widely and that one should not try and transfer these numbers into GURPS, because the prices wont translate well at all. It is useful to work backwards, though, and work things out based on historical data. Numbers below are from the first half of the 14th century (before 1350):

Mercenaries:
knight banneret: 4s/day
knight: 2s/day
man-at-arms or squire: 1s/day

Regular Army:
Esquires, constables, and centenars: 1s/day
Mounted archers, armored infantry, hobilars, vintenars: 6d/day
Archers: 3d/day
Captain: 8s/day

Laborer: £2/year max
Crown revenues (at peace): £30 000
Barons per year: £200-500+
Earls per year: £400-£11000

(Shillings = s, Pence = d)

Note that a carucate is about 120 acres of farm land. Based on some other research I've done, it takes about 24 bushels of cereal grain, plus forage, to feed a human for a year in the middle ages, and cereal crops at the time yielded 6-8 bushels per acre.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

By having them be multimillionaires. The cost of warriors, and the logistics required to have and use warriors, is absolutely one of the biggest reasons why they didn't have more wars -- no one could afford them!

That's when you take large loans and pledge away the kingdom you just won!

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by JaJH

Numbers below are from the first half of the 14th century (before 1350):

Mercenaries:
knight banneret: 4s/day
knight: 2s/day
man-at-arms or squire: 1s/day

Regular Army:
Esquires, constables, and centenars: 1s/day
Mounted archers, armored infantry, hobilars, vintenars: 6d/day
Archers: 3d/day
Captain: 8s/day

Laborer: £2/year max
Crown revenues (at peace): £30 000
Barons per year: £200-500+
Earls per year: £400-£11000

(Shillings = s, Pence = d)

So at 20 shillings to the pound, keeping an "ordinary" knight for three weeks would be equal to a little more than a year's wages for the average laborer. Yeah, that sort of thing adds up fast.

Thanks for the figures!

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Aneirin

Has anyone run a game where people hire and maintain their own troops and how did you manage it?

It bothers me too. A lot.

I'll be creating a more flexible subsubsystem for raising armies, for use in the stratego-economic "playing as lords" subsystem for my homebrew RPG system, called Sagatafl. I don't have much shareable material yet, beyond what I've posted over in the relevant thread in the Roleplaying forum.

One thing that may be of use to you, and which I talk about in that thread, is the Mead Hall model, if you want to use something that's pre-feudal (and which may still be present in some early medieval worlds, such as my Ärth setting (or GURPS Vikings), or in non-early medieval oddball worlds such as GURPS' Yrth setting).

But it's not particularly rules-driven. You build yourself a Mead Hall. You supply a steady stream of drink (mead, or strong beer, or wine which might be an expensive import depending on where you are), you give frequent Gifts to your warriors (i.e. act as a "Ring-Giver") to reward them for bravery, and you hire a Bard or Skald, to hang out in your Hall and compose songs or poems about how cool your warriors are. Then you wait, and based on your Reputation, warriors will be attracted to the Mead Hall and ask to enter your service (in exchange for booze, food, lodging, clothes, and the chance of an occasional Gift). Replacement warriors will keep coming in at a reasonable pace (even though you'll wish it to be higher), especially if the local people buy into this Dying-in-Battle->Valhalla meme.

Likewise, as a potential for vertical integration, lordly characters can manufacture war-gear for their troops, instead of having to buy it from the Market (which I derisively call The Black Box Market, because I think it becomes horribly non-simulative, as soon as you scale up from mere knights to even people as low as knight bannerettes or barons - let alone Kings, ArchDruids and Dukes).

But you need skilled smiths to make war-gear, and you need Iron, and Iron comes from mines, so you do also go for ownership of a Mine, or do you buy the Iron from the Market? (Or in an explicitly non-Market campaign, do you trade with other characters, PCs or NPCs, to get the Iron they extract from the Mines they own?)