Oleksandr

The thing is, new regional modifiers (mostly) correspond to old Cymri variations, yet it stated that now they apply to any culture living in region. Tat quite a big difference...

On 11/25/2022 at 1:15 PM, Morien said:

Where did you read that

About lance sizes in wiki, rest, if i remember correctly, in wiki too +i consulted with my friend, historian-medievalist.

On 11/25/2022 at 1:15 PM, Morien said:

If you look at, say, Battle of Bouvines, the infantry is the majority of both armies.

"Philip had launched an appeal to the municipalities in northern France, in order to obtain their support. 16 of the 39 municipalities of the royal demesne answered the call to arms... The balance of the infantry, possibly another 2,000 men, were composed of mercenaries" so, vast majority of this army was urban militia, +mercenaries. If i remember correctly such militias rarely participate in field battles, this was more of act of desperation. and crusades aren't really representative of normal arrangement. +any numbers from chronicles are unreliable.

Thing is, unlike England, which had parliament since forever, empire in question had absolute monarchy, and two of this 4 empreses come to power via military coup.

On 11/25/2022 at 1:30 PM, Morien said:

For example in Britain, at the time of Queen Victoria, women (even aristocratic ones) did not have a vote

It important to remember that people in the past (contrary to popular belief) wasn't any more stupid or cowardly then us. What i mean, this aristocratic women, if they wanted to influence politics, could, by influencing their husbands. Many did. In fact, most of such women did not support women rights movements, because it would actually diminish their personal power (why share with commoners?)

p.s. interestingly, in medieval elective monarchies at least 4 women was elected as rulers. 3 of them held title "king", not "queen".😉

p.p.s. sorry if my words sound to harsh. Cruise missiles flying over my head das not improve my mood at all...🤬

It was stated that different edition of the game are compatible, yet it seems that BoKaL completely replace various Cymri cultural modifiers (from 4th edition corebook) with regional modifiers.

What with all this cultural and religious variations from region books?

Another question, i read that in the beginning of High Middle Age - golden age of knighthood - armies consisted almost exclusively from cavalry, knights and mounted sergeants, with dismounted cavalry playing infantry role if required. AND thet lance size also variatied, in many cases (especially early on) just 2 combatants (sometime with sergeant replaced with older squire). As i understand KAP goes for more of a mix of eras, but 🧐

13 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

It is a dictatorship of plutocratic males. 

😑 Couple centuries ago my people (who was at the time occupied by large empire), end up under rule of 4 empresses in a row (two emperors in between lasted month each), 3 of them was absolute monarch, and ruled with iron fist, for majority of the century. Second to last imprisoned her 2 month old cousin for the rest of his (short) life to get rid of potential rivals. Last of them introduced absolute serfdom, which, due to peculiarities of local laws, effectively mean she enslaved ALL villagers. And persecuted minorities (including us. BTW, we had no serfdom before that). "Dictatorship" of plutocratic males? Try dictatorship of aristocratic females 🙄

22 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Unfortunately that doesn't for a moment convince me of your case.  Collectivism is a useful structure, but individuals within that structure still existed as discrete entities.

The thing is, people who grown up in such collectivistic society don't view their individuality the way modern westerners do. And this explain quite a lot of weird behavior of our ancestors...

22 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Similarly, describing something as a representative democracy when it was anything but doesn't help.

Well, any form of representative democracy is compromise. Question of how many people are actually represented, with all that parties who don't get minimum % of votes (with their voters being effectively disregarded),  with people who didn't bother to vote...

While reading LoG i noticed (beside the fact that older edition books has NO standardisation 😅) a lot of thing not stated. Like, in description of lokal kingdoms and they armies there is war-canoes, longships and royal longship, which never described in book (while it understandable that one is bigger than other, still...). Same with soldiers, it said that thanes is professional warriors, and hall-thanes are elite professional warriors, yet no stats. shield-maidens and house-karls has no description at all, much less stats...

Similar things with other books, like in some example kingdom has "fierce soldiers". Does that means they stronger than normal?

On 1/10/2022 at 10:48 AM, Ali the Helering said:

The use of violence by the elite or by those sanctioned by a local elite has frequently been accepted.

What is interesting in this regard is that some medieval states (in some part of HRE, for example) legally demanded commoners to be armed. Acording to BotW same true for arthurian kingdom.

On 1/6/2022 at 5:10 PM, Ali the Helering said:

Representative government in the UK didn't truly exist until the Representation of the People Act in 1928, with female suffrage.  Until then it was the domain of select and unrepresentative groupings.

It's important to remember that unlike us (who focus on people as individuals first and foremost) traditional culture was way more collectivist. Person was first a member of group - tribe, clan, noble house, community, guild... In such society somebody representing large group of people (whole family* and community) was seen as perfectly feasible. For people from such cultures universal suffrage would be feeld as totally unnecessary.

*in fact, we know plenty of cases when rulers and nobles consult with their wives on political matters, and cases when spouses co-ruled as equal, and even when woman ruled from behind weak husband. There probably was more cases we don't know about. That, and remembering important administrative role of wives (and occasionally mothers), i would say women had much more involvement in politics than many people think.

On 11/22/2022 at 10:37 AM, Ali the Helering said:

Not, I would suggest, a man whose opinions should be taken seriously.

I don't know who this Gregory and Starkey are, but just because person say something controversial doesn't necessarily mean that said person automatically wrong in everything.

21 hours ago, Morien said:

No. Uther and Boy King give +10% per market town/city/port, while Anarchy is 0%. See page 11, Table 1.2.

I'm not sure about this. It said that in BKP "Market Towns recover their purpose. Income bonuses from both are once again applied. Arthur also franchises many new towns to be Market Towns. Around 515, he begins granting new privileges to Market Towns...

...These changes benefit the inhabitants directly, and the local population indirectly, by making goods easier to access. The general and widespread saving of the rural populace is expressed as if it was income. Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains..."

From BotW (101): "Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains a bonus of £1 per £10 (ten percent) of render. Round off decimals to the nearest tenth." 1) so, from boy king period onward market towns provide 20% income bonus? that would make total bonus (town+port+city+woods) +50%?; 2) i understand correctly that this bonuses affect everybody in area, and commoners just pay more taxes due to larger income?

On 11/19/2022 at 2:10 PM, whitelaughter said:

This is the sort of stuff that a millennia later, the church was still having to argue against! So by all means pin the blame on Rome. And remember that the pagan world was no better.

There's a reason that women have traditionally liked Christianity...

This reminded me about "Da Vinci code" movie (haven't read book yet, heard it a little bit better), where "historian" claimed the pagan romans maintained balance between male and female, and then evil catholics came and suppressed women with witch burning in middle ages😅. Except 1) as you mentioned, romans (and greeks) was extremely misogynistic 2) pagan romans had witch hunts, while early christian didn't 3)mass witch burnings started only after middle ages, was mostly done by protestants, not catholics, and there was just as much men burned as women...

It off topic, but i don't want to create new thread for simple question, and this one is most appropriate. from 4th edition rulebook:

"Critical: The spell works, and the caster receives double her personal Life Force for use in the spell, without the detriment of increased sleep or aging costs for this extra Life Force."

And then, on the same page -

"If the magician finds she has not prepared long enough, either through the benefit of a Criticalled Talent roll, or because she finds she needs a larger effect than anticipated, she may still perform the magic at the higher level. Increase Sleep Owed for each increment of extra Life Force for which she did not amply prepare."

That's quite a big difference...🤨

😉

On 2/16/2022 at 2:15 PM, Morien said:

Fair enough. 🙂 It would be a bit strange to have 5 vassal knights of £10 each, and the "King of the Red City" with the city itself of £10, though.

BTW, my historian friend said thet there was cases of kingdoms where kings had no demesne whatsoever, relying solely on vassal support...

Not sure it would be good from players perspective, but it seems that relatively smaller demesne would be more interesting from world building perspective - less high noblesse, more knight, less intrigue, more adventuring, smaller societal gap...

On 2/15/2022 at 1:55 PM, Morien said:

A King is different from a Baron. More interesting would be to look at how much subinfeudation was going on in English baronies, and how did that evolve with time.

Well, your original post was about kingdom, however small one 😅 but demesne-to-enfeoffed proportions for different titles is indead interesting question.

2 hours ago, Morien said:

If we go by KAP 4 scaling of bannerets, you'd expect about 50/50 split, so the 'kingdom' might be a small one with a £50 demesne and £50 enfeoffed manors, for a total of £100. However, if we go with BotW scaling of 10-20% enfeoffed, this would give the size of the full kingdom somewhere between £250 and £500. So about a regular baronial honour of £300 or so.

  BTW, that also interesting question - demesne of William the Conqueror was just 17% of kingdom. And this was a guy who goes out of his way to ensure advantage over his vassals...

On 1/21/2022 at 4:36 PM, Morien said:

After all, if you cram towers right next to one another... Congratulations, you have a very expensive, slightly taller wall.

Funnily enough, i'm sure i seen photo of such "wall of (round) towers" 😅 . If i remember correctly, it was in France. 

15 hours ago, fulk said:

So, one tower on a huge city wall has little effect.  At the same time, if only a small portion of the walls are accessible, say because most of them are on a cliff edge, you need fewer towers to achieve the 'max' DV.  

I want to clarify one more thing - can this system actually increase tower DV if approach is really narrow? Or basic DV is maximum?

14 hours ago, Morien said:

Maybe. But if I am giving the PK access to slightly higher quality troops, I am going to make him pay for that, too. For example, the Saxon Warriors might be expecting some gifts from their generous chieftain if the year has gone well, and the Saxon ceorls might not be willing to put up with Squeezes.

Make sense. + that aren't big price.

15 hours ago, Morien said:

and the warrior elite is fighting in the Cymric style and needing Cymric type social organization to fund the knight and the horses.

Though, presumably this saxon knights/sergeants/soldiers still will have better stats 😅

15 hours ago, Morien said:

As for Kent, Wessex, etc... By the time the Saxon lands are reconquered after Badon, there are not really all that much call for the peasant militias, and you probably would have forbidden the Saxon ceorls to own weapons and armor anyway, in order to make rebelling harder for them.

 Well, GPC and BaL say that there are plenty of rebels and bandits in this land, + potential rival lords. That is good reasons to ensure defensiveness of lord's economic base. Especially if said lord is saxon, even assimilated one.

14 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

I never used levée (what's the name in english?) in my game. Peasants are not dragonfooder. They don't want to fight, they don't know how to fight, they have bad moral, and will run away easily.

Understandable, yet both game rules and history say that they will defend their homes and families as well as they can.

13 hours ago, fulk said:

so you need fewer people AND fewer towers for the same DV.  

Interestingly, i can't find this changes in newer books. Was it published? If no, how then this work? What this features, and how towers DV calculated with it?

Question, corebook say knights can mobilise their peasants for defence, so, if PK is berrock (or other loyal) saxon, and rule over land in Berroc or similar saxon populated region, should they instead have access to ceorls? (and that is another good reason to treet commoners well, in GPC among Uther period's troop tipes "Rich ceorl" rated above standard foot soldiers)

Similarly, should they have saxon warriors instead of foot soldiers?

24 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

But why does the riverside protect the town walls but also the outworks? I can't imagine the whole thing.

Maybe outworks are too on the riverside, while the rest of inner fortifications are farther away?