Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[Raw Shark]

This week is ridiculously busy for me, my apologies for slacking off.

So, my initial thoughts on Aztec forces:

If we're calling standard fortifications free, I'm going to include the yodeling and exploding cacti in that if nobody objects, as an early warning system / minefield. Yodeling cacti that are over-watered and carefully cultivated are more likely to explode for the purpose of killing or inconveniencing invaders, which they're pretty good at, but they can only do it once and take a while to grow back. Other than that our fortifications are not so advanced, mostly consisting of earthworks, punji and pit traps, and eyes in the sky except in the largest cities, which have stonework, magical defenses, and are generally at a high altitude.

Light Infantry (Musketeer): Pretty much your regular 1-point soldier. Deficient in armor (lacquered wood, at best), but each unit has at least one shaman beseeching the wind spirits to direct and propel their fire, so their range and accuracy is superb for musketeers, and they mount 12" bayonets for close combat. Each also carries an obsidian dagger as a last resort weapon, but more importantly as a ceremonial tool in case he is ordered to sacrifice himself on the battlefield, which most are able to carry out without extreme coercion.

Light Infantry (Pepper Knights): Ancient contracts with the habanero God empower this sacred order, whose ranks are mainly drawn from the younger sons of the aristocracy, but open to anyone who can withstand the torturous initiation ritual and maintain their strict rules of conduct. Their priesthood cultivate magical peppers that give them berserk strength, fearlessness, and resistance to pain when consumed. Each is typically armed with two flintlock pistols and an obsidian or shark-tooth maquahuitl with enough enchantments on it to easily cleave plate armor or a horse's head from its shoulders with a good swing by the right wielder. Unfortunately they're not as tough as they feel, and often take high casualties, especially if called upon to rush gunmen or monsters. But they will do it. 1.5 Each.

Light Cavalry Lancers: Mounted spearman, also equipped with a brace of flintlock pistols. Brave and well-trained, but with crap armor. 1 point each.

Field Artillery: A little backwards, but made comparable with wind spirit assistance that can be messed with magically. Our grapeshot is particularly scary, like a swarm of bees, when our mojo is working, but we tend to be light on heavy bombardment because we're more used to running away from really big scary things than shelling them, because the ones we usually deal with know our names and where we live.

Chubacabrae (Monster): Your basic 1-point monster. It flies, sees perfectly in the dark, is about the size, strength, and intelligence of Lassie, and can very silently jump a guy and drain his blood, but is absolute crap in a pitched battle. Add +1 point per unit if the Chupacabrae has an Owl Knight rider, except where it is reasonable to include aerial recon in my free fortifications.

Jaguar Knights (Monster / Special Forces): The were Jaguars are able to transform normal humans into their own kind. A bite isn't enough, but it's part of the ritual. Most have at least some Native American blood, but only demonstrated unarmed combat ability, sincere-sounding vows, and big brass balls are required for the initiation. Many tend to "retire" to Northern or coastal defense after burning out on the stresses of battling the Cthonian horrors that lie to the South. They have the strength, agility, speed, stealth, night vision, and natural weaponry of a normal jaguar when transformed, but are a pain in the ass to armor or equip and can be killed by lead bullets. 1.25 each..? They're basically comparable to Jub's intelligent big cats, except they can have hands and pass for human if they need to.

Giant Octopi (Monster): One of these has a 50/50 shot at bringing down a frigate, but it would require a lot of them to take out a ship of the line. Advantages are that they're as smart as a human, have very acute senses, and have very high manual dexterity, with ability to engage opponents much smaller than themselves equal to their ability to wrestle a ship. Also very stealthy, able to change color as camouflage, emerge from the deep with no warning, and to discharge a huge cloud of ink when attempting escape. Disadvantages are that they're fragile for their size, bleeding out from damage that would not sink most ships of the same weight class when they do get hit. No idea what this is worth.

Support: We have really great surgeons and herbalists, but our magical healing is practically nonexistent. I was thinking of calling this different from but comparable to the norm unless anybody objects.

Regarding my navy, I have no idea what I'm doing here really, but generally-speaking I'd like my ships to be as fast as the best in the setting and more maneuverable than anybody else's, with the wind spirits and Ocean God actively assisting them as long as I maintain a good relationship with them, and I'm willing to pay whatever everybody thinks is fair for that. Every ship of the line and scouting frigate has at least one Owl Knight on aerial recon at all times, and flights of Chupacabrae are housed within to harass enemy ships at night. Disadvantages include more or less primitive artillery brought up to par with average by wind spirit intervention that can be messed with magically, and a high rate of attrition among the crew and/or captives in times of unusual need that make their peak battle, evasion, and travel capabilities unsustainable for very long. Any ideas on what that's worth?

[madd0ct0r]

based on everything else, I'm going to bring my baseline hyenorks back down to 1pt each.

I'm not sure at anything above a 200pt battle an equal number of heynorks and musketeers would go in favour of the hyenorks.

[Simon_Jester]

Raw, your ship speeds should be up to about 15-16 knots. Orion's fastest frigates can manage fifteen knots in a favorable wind using weight-reducing magic. Your ability to conjure up magic winds and build ships that you can be confident won't just fucking sink or have their masts rip off due to excessive wind means you can use heavy sail plans, which would help you approach that 15-knot standard. The blessings of the ocean god would be most helpful in reducing friction between your hull and the water, and possibly causing any barnacles that try to cling to your hull to die horribly (normal people cover the ship in copper to accomplish this).

With reduced friction and control of the winds, fifteen knots (about 17-18 mph) is reasonable as a sustained speed; much higher than this requires very conspicuously magical ships because those are pretty close to world record speeds for the fastest sailing ships of the entire Age of Sail.

[Zwinmar]

Comment's on Zwinmar's order of battle:

...
1 Orc Line Infantry=2 points
Fireteam=4 Highly Disciplined Orcs 8 points
Squad=3 Fireteam+leader- 26 points
Platoon=3 Squad+2 officers 80 points
Company=3 Platoons+2O 240 points
Battalion=3 Companies+2O 724 points
Regiment=3 Battalions+20 2,172 points
Division=3 Regiments+2O 6,520 points

It was fairly common to use a broader span of command than trinary unit structures in Napoleonic and pre-Napoleonic times, just for the record. Also, larger formations typically need at least some staff, if only so that the regimental commander has couriers to communicate with his own formations.

Moreover, the weapons of this period fired and loaded slowly enough, and were inaccurate enough, that a four man team could not cover each other effectively in sustained close quarters combat, and lacked enough firepower to be a useful combat element in open field warfare.

For close quarters in this era it would be more typical to arm the combatant with multiple single-shot pistols, allowing multiple rounds in a short span of time should circumstances warrant it. However, flintlock pistols are so inaccurate that they are only useful in close quarters.

Conversely, in open battle the tactical unit was typically a section, and a large section at that, which was at most one unit down the chain of command from the platoon leader.

Placing that because need help figuring out the point cost and the replacement of horses with wolves or buffalo.

I'd rate buffalo as being worth 1.5 points IF they are adequately trained and don't suffer much from the weaknesses of herd animals (stampeding being the biggest one; horses stampede but are liekly to be easier to restrain). Wolves, if they're physically big enough to support an orc-sized rider, might well be two-point mounts, but would pose some real logistical problems because they're carnivorous.

What I was contemplating was the smallest would more accurately be originally how many Orcs to a tent.
Also, basic commands can be handled by wolf howls, psychologically unnerving and since the wolves are sentient it would drive the cost up for everything.

I am also toying the the idea of something akin to telepathy between wolves (and select few Orcs) similar to whats seen in the Wheel of Time series, though not sure how to go about it just yet.
-----------
Random Thought:
If each platoon can be considered a pack, then a four being team could well be the smallest maneuver unit.

[Simon_Jester]

Four-man tents, workable. Just bearing in mind that a four-man team typically doesn't have anything to do when operating independently, unless they are part of a specially trained light infantry or assault unit.

Communications by wolf howls, also workable as long as the orcs know how to interpret what the wolves are saying. One catch is that this may not be the best way to express abstract concepts or new ideas. Good luck translating "enfilade" into wolf-ese. Historical armies used drums, horns, bugles, and so on, and it worked for them. Sentient wolves can probably express more concepts, but on the other hand they aren't as loud as drummers and would be harder to hear over a loud battlefield.

Telepathic coordination of a small number of individual soldiers scattered throughout the army... That can be handled either by increasing the per-point value of the soldiers to reflect improved coordination (my approach) or by integrating point-value troopers into each unit at the platoon or lower level (E_F's approach).

[Eternal_Freedom]

Sorry for the delay, I was travelling all bloody day.

So, Simon: my thoughts on the ships points costs, yeah, I figured they were overly-expensive, I ballparked the numbers to fit into the 80,000 points I had left and waited to see what everyone else thought about values. Would 600 points for a frigate and 1500 for a two-decker be more reasonable? And maybe 400 for a 20-gun sloop (with 24 pdr guns). Duly noted on the swivel guns, I'll cut them down to 6 pdr weapons.

Oh, and I gave up on using the weight-reducing magic to give a speed boost when you pointed out it wouldn't work as I thought it would, instead we're doing the copper-bottom thing, but with an inbuilt enchantment to keep the copper plates a) in place, b) smooth and c) free of barnacles etc.

On the Army units, yeah, that many telepaths is probably unnecessary, I've cut them back to one per Company and Artillery Battery, (40 total) plus 40 more in reserve with the HQ. That right there saves me 800 points (extra Frigate per Regiment, heh).

On the point cost per troopers, I interpreted "1 point per musket-armed militiaman" to mean a conscript/new recruit, whereas my troops are professional volunteer soldiers who serve and train for years, while the Shock Infantry are the Regimental Elite troops. And yeah, they are armed with muskets, though proper rifles are in development. But if people think it's more reasonable, I can lower it to 1.25 for Line Infantry and 1.5/1.75 for Shock Infantry.

As for the number of artillery guns, yeah I know I'm heavy on guns, but since I have basically the best arty in the world so far I might as well make use of it. Yes, the guns are heavier than normal, even with the Technomancy so they are less mobile, which is another reason why I have more guns to make up for the lack of mobility.

I think that covers everything I think. This gives me a new revised total forces of:

18 Army Regiments: 200,610 points, 94,860 men
Praetorian Guard: 6000 points, 1500 men
10 Battleships: 15,000 points
70 Frigates: 42,000 points
100 Sloops: 40,000 points
Total Points: 303,610 points


Points totals subject to change if people think my ship costs are about right.

[madd0ct0r]

Draft Order of Battle: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Queen Igraborlla's Mammoth Tribe
. . Raiders 24000 points 1000 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders
. . Seige Mammoths 10800 points 1800 trained war mammoths with 4 crew each.
. . Bombard Mammoths 4500 points 450 trained war mammoths with 4 crew and a mounted mortar cannon each.

White Horns Musk Ox Tribe
. . Raiders 3216 points 134 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders
. . Musk Ox Calvacade 10000 points 250 warparties of 20 Musk-Ox riding skirmishers
. . Sheild raiders 9600 points 200 warparties of 24 leather Shield-bearers and musk ox support

Stone Hoof Musk Ox Tribe
. . War chariot 750 points 250 war chariots with 3 crew
. . Musk Ox Calvacade 10000 points 250 warparties of 20 Musk-Ox riding skirmishers
. . Raiders 3216 points 134 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders

Creeklands Musk Ox Tribe
. . Musk Ox Calvacade 10000 points 250 warparties of 20 Musk-Ox riding skirmishers
. . Sheild raiders 19200 points 200 warparties of 24 leather Shield-bearers and musk ox support
. . Raiders 3168 points 132 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders

North Isles Whale Tribe
. . Raiders 2400 points 100 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders
. . Rib Boats 120 points 15 rib boats with crews of 6 armed Hyenork raiders
. . Driftwood raiders 1500 points 50 warparties of 24 skilled coastal Hyenork bowmen

Bay Landers Whale Tribe
. . Raiders 7200 points 300 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders
. . Rib Boats 280 points 35 rib boats with crews of 6 armed Hyenork raiders
. . Driftwood raiders 4500 points 150 warparties of skilled coastal Hyenork bowmen

Blights's Edge Caribou Tribe
. . Soft Paws 12000 points 500 warparties of 12 skilled forest Hyenork bowmen
. . Raiders 7200 points 300 warparties of 24 lightly armed Hyenork raiders


All Hyenork Raiders use leather slings and claws but will scatter when faced with a determined firing block.
Driftwood Raiders carry harpoons and cable backed bows in addition.
The Soft Paws carry longer bows and poison tipped darts suitable for woodland game hunting. They haunt the edges of the abandoned forest and keep it from spreading.
A result of Queen Igrabolla's endless wars of conquest, the Shield-Bearers utilise Musk Oxs as a baggage train, and will seige a raider party or charge home behind a palisade shield of many thick layers of leather.
Musk-Ox cavalcades do not use the heavy armour, but charge home relying on a hammer blow to collapse the lines.
Mammoths are often taken to war with a leather and bone tower and a crew of slingers, and sometimes even a small catapult.
Bombard Mammoths are the rarest of all units, and a intensely important symbol of Queen Igrabolla's imperial might. They're not that effective, but there's nothing in the sheildlands to challenge them.

[Jub]

madd0ct0r if you want to expand your borders to take more of the arctic I'd have no issue neighboring you. In fact, I think the raiding and counter-raiding between our nations could make for an easy source of stories for when a writer's block hits.

[madd0ct0r]

my fear isn't shortage of stories, it's not being able to keep up writing speed with the rest of you

[Jub]

my fear isn't shortage of stories, it's not being able to keep up writing speed with the rest of you

I can understand that, I'm a bit anxious about that myself. I've always been better at the pre-game setup than writing interesting stories.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry for the delay, I was travelling all bloody day.

So, Simon: my thoughts on the ships points costs, yeah, I figured they were overly-expensive, I ballparked the numbers to fit into the 80,000 points I had left and waited to see what everyone else thought about values. Would 600 points for a frigate and 1500 for a two-decker be more reasonable? And maybe 400 for a 20-gun sloop (with 24 pdr guns). Duly noted on the swivel guns, I'll cut them down to 6 pdr weapons.

The extremely heavy gun armament might justify that high point value for a sloop. Personally I'd rate the liners at around 1200 (or twice whatever your heavy frigates punch at). A normal (e.g. 32 or 36-gun) frigate would be more like 400-500, with a normal sloop being no more than 200 points or so. Your sloops are heavily overgunned and I might bump them to 300 (point value isn't just a linear function of cannon power).

Oh, and I gave up on using the weight-reducing magic to give a speed boost when you pointed out it wouldn't work as I thought it would, instead we're doing the copper-bottom thing, but with an inbuilt enchantment to keep the copper plates a) in place, b) smooth and c) free of barnacles etc.

The entire point of copper bottoms is that they remain smooth and are grim death to barnacles. They stay in place pretty well by nonmagical means but magical augmentation can't hurt. Also, the weight reduction magic will help if applied strategically to the right parts of the ship- particularly the heavy artillery on the gundeck. Someone who knows more about ships than me (TimothyC being the obvious candidate) could help more.

It's just that the behavior of a ship at sea is far more complicated from an engineering standpoint than the simple F=ma behavior of a rocketship in deep space. Moreover, acceleration is not top speed, and the top speed of a ship is a function of a complicated equilibrium between a variety of different forces, some of which become actively more powerful the faster the ship goes.

One asset Orion may have that helps them build Very Fast Ships is just plain good math and science, because they may know at least the basic principles of hydrodynamics and have the concept of testing hulls in scale models in order to optimize the design. This is historically not something anybody did prior to the 1800s but it's very much in keeping with the spirit of Orion and doesn't really unbalance the game the way that steam locomotives would.

On the point cost per troopers, I interpreted "1 point per musket-armed militiaman" to mean a conscript/new recruit, whereas my troops are professional volunteer soldiers who serve and train for years, while the Shock Infantry are the Regimental Elite troops. And yeah, they are armed with muskets, though proper rifles are in development. But if people think it's more reasonable, I can lower it to 1.25 for Line Infantry and 1.5/1.75 for Shock Infantry.

I went with the idea that one point is a Well Armed Man- a soldier who is competent and effective and in no way particularly inadequate, but who also doesn't have any special advantages or protections beyond what we in this world would think of as 'normal.'

Otherwise it just encourages point inflation.

As for the number of artillery guns, yeah I know I'm heavy on guns, but since I have basically the best arty in the world so far I might as well make use of it. Yes, the guns are heavier than normal, even with the Technomancy so they are less mobile, which is another reason why I have more guns to make up for the lack of mobility.

The big problem is that your artillery arm is going to be excessive, to the point where it actively bogs down your army, places ridiculous constraints on the supply train, and otherwise creates awkwardness. A large artillery piece will need something like ten or fifteen pounds of gunpowder per shot, and gunpowder gets expensive in large quantity, so just firing a full barrage from one of your brigade-sized regiments' artillery, once, would use up 1/4 to 1/3 of a ton of expensive, magically augmented gunpowder.

Plus, of course, this heavy artillery is not going to be easy to employ in maneuver warfare, and will led itself to very static, plodding tactics. Extremely effective in a siege with secure lines of supply, but you may find yourself in a position where much of your army is doing almost literally nothing but guarding cannons and supplies of powder and shot to stop the enemy from interfering with your supplies.

I reiterate, you have three times as many guns per man as Napoleon, and Napoleon used his artillery very extensively to devastating effect despite having smaller guns than you do.

[Coop D'etat]

On the point cost per troopers, I interpreted "1 point per musket-armed militiaman" to mean a conscript/new recruit, whereas my troops are professional volunteer soldiers who serve and train for years, while the Shock Infantry are the Regimental Elite troops. And yeah, they are armed with muskets, though proper rifles are in development. But if people think it's more reasonable, I can lower it to 1.25 for Line Infantry and 1.5/1.75 for Shock Infantry.

I went with the idea that one point is a Well Armed Man- a soldier who is competent and effective and in no way particularly inadequate, but who also doesn't have any special advantages or protections beyond what we in this world would think of as 'normal.'

Otherwise it just encourages point inflation.

I'm thinking that we should restate the rules for pricing so that 1 point taken to be the value of standard front-line infantry grunt with for our North America, the sort that is competitive in regular open warfare of our military ecosystem as an ordinary human musketeer/melee footman.

There could also be an expectation that most of us should also have the equivalents of hastily raised militia, press-ganged civilians, cannon-fodder rabble and various and sundrey expendable forces that take on secondary roles away from the main field armies or bulk up the numbers of depleted armies. Most of what has been posted seems to be what you'd have as the more glamerous standing regular forces or the tribal warrior caste not the poor smucks who get called up to die for the cause (which I have been as guilty of as anyone).

[Raw Shark]

Raw, your ship speeds should be up to about 15-16 knots. Orion's fastest frigates can manage fifteen knots in a favorable wind using weight-reducing magic. Your ability to conjure up magic winds and build ships that you can be confident won't just fucking sink or have their masts rip off due to excessive wind means you can use heavy sail plans, which would help you approach that 15-knot standard. The blessings of the ocean god would be most helpful in reducing friction between your hull and the water, and possibly causing any barnacles that try to cling to your hull to die horribly (normal people cover the ship in copper to accomplish this).

With reduced friction and control of the winds, fifteen knots (about 17-18 mph) is reasonable as a sustained speed; much higher than this requires very conspicuously magical ships because those are pretty close to world record speeds for the fastest sailing ships of the entire Age of Sail.

To be clear, I don't want obvious superiority in speed, but in maneuverability. Parity with the best in speed, plus the ability to turn on a dime or cut and run in a way that is very obviously magical, as long as the blood flows. The disadvantage is the unsustainability, but until everybody starts getting light-headed we're high-octane.

On the subject of hasty militia, press gangs, etc, we have local spearman with improvised armor (bread helmets not out of the question) who have been given a few hours of basic training and only come into play when their home communities are attacked. They're probably worth about 0.1 points each with a reasonably capable leader.

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit: All of my wind-spirit-infused munitions laugh joyously as they are released from their obligations. It's a little unnerving for most people who haven't experienced it before.

My light cavalry in the northern Andes ride giant llamas instead of horses, because llamas. They have the same stats, but are advantageous in steep and uneven terrain, but kind of clumsy on most others.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm thinking that we should restate the rules for pricing so that 1 point taken to be the value of standard front-line infantry grunt with for our North America, the sort that is competitive in regular open warfare of our military ecosystem as an ordinary human musketeer/melee footman.

I second this motion, noting that it doesn't really require much of a rules change and involves only a trivial exercise in multiplication and division for our order of battle.

There could also be an expectation that most of us should also have the equivalents of hastily raised militia, press-ganged civilians, cannon-fodder rabble and various and sundrey expendable forces that take on secondary roles away from the main field armies or bulk up the numbers of depleted armies. Most of what has been posted seems to be what you'd have as the more glamerous standing regular forces or the tribal warrior caste not the poor smucks who get called up to die for the cause (which I have been as guilty of as anyone).

Well, Ohio doesn't actually have trained fighting forces at lower point value than this, because they are basically 1 pt/man (maybe 1.1 pt/man, tops) soldiers who get the rest of their strength from the practice of their religion as applied to the battlefield.

They can't go below that, unless they went out of their way to recruit atheists into their military or something, which they don't.

Not counting the fixed garrisons of obscure frontier fortifications that don't have a permanent military regiment attached to them, who might not be adequately trained to meet the baseline 1 pt/man standard. Thing is, such garrisons are effectively part of their fortifications- they're the guys who crack a few skulls when there's a riot in a major city, man the border checkpoints, and ride up and down the river border on a horse to watch for signs of random bandits with water wings trying to cross. If I wanted to mobilize them I guess I could, but I'd pay the points for them if I intended to do that.

On the subject of hasty militia, press gangs, etc, we have local spearman with improvised armor (bread helmets not out of the question) who have been given a few hours of basic training and only come into play when their home communities are attacked. They're probably worth about 0.1 points each with a reasonably capable leader.

0.1 points sounds doubtful unless their equipment is literally Stone Age. Ten vaguely trained-ish spearmen would almost certainly overwhelm any one normal soldier unless they really screwed up by the numbers. And 10000 such spearmen would be if anything more likely to overwhelm 1000 normal soldiers, unless (again) the technological disparity is literally Stone Age vs. Steel Age a la Aztecs against Cortez.

Other stuff is cool beans.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm finishing up the new rules right now (and once again, apologies for the delay), but I thought I'd also check up with those of you who are near my territory and try to hammer out diplomatic/trade relations in a bit more detail.

As it stands, my people are moderately xenophobic nomads/refugees trying to settle down and build a new state. They are internally divided between those who want to remain wanderers, those who want a new homeland, those who want to return to their old land, and those who want to resort to dark magic, but loyalty to the crown and fear of another civil war is holding them together for the most part. Their default attitude towards other peoples and states is basically "Leave them alone if they leave us alone, maybe some limited trade." However, they can hold grudges for a long time, being immortal, and they have no fondness for undead, dark magic, and hyenorks as a rule. Pretty anti-slavery/anti-sacrificing of sentient beings too. Their are procedures in their society to settle a feud (non-lethal duelling is popular), but those wouldn't necessarily translate to outsiders.

For trade, I'm looking to set up at least two trade centres. One will be a harbour around where real world Victoria is. The other will be an overland route to Jub's territory. I'll be looking to export pretty much anything you can get out of the ocean, and import crops and some mineral wealth. Maybe fabrics and magical artifacts too.

Border security will be tight, and raids may be responded to in kind, but my people will probably try to avoid all out war at present because they're in no shape to fight one.

[madd0ct0r]

Do you want to specify anything about the woodlands you've left behind? I'm calling them the blight for the Hyenorks, with all sorts of nasties crawling out, and it also goes some way to explain the funny shape of Nunavut in real life

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I'm thinking it was a forest of mostly conifers, with some small streams, rivers, lakes, and rocky hills. It was located on the southwestern side of Hudson's Bay, not too far from where Orion's border is now as I recall. Probably between you and Orion (So my people might have some relations with Orion going way back, even if my people moved more to the west and aren't anywhere near Orion now). Temperate in the summer, cold and snowy in the winter (a colloquial name for my people is Cold Elves or Snow Elves, though the official name pre-migration is the Coronal, which is the name of the Forest for my people as well). They had some harbours on Hudson's Bay (or the Bay of Ice, as they call it).

Basically, they had some small communities scattered throughout the woodlands (generally building around the forests rather than cutting them down), with a larger palace/citidel and ancillary workshops, libraries, markets, etc. in the heart of their territory. Also halls for the Order of Scholars and Order of Healers. All of this is now probably monster-infested/haunted ruins.

Edit: My people like their magic. You could probably loot some wonderful artifacts from the ruins, though as much as possible was taken with the Wanderers when they left.

Also, my sense is the forest is mostly dead now, between falling temperatures, warfare, and maybe drought. I could see dark magic playing a role too.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, their would probably have been a string of border posts around the edges of the woods. A major breach of that line by Hyenork raiders would probably have been one of the things to push my people into realizing they needed to move.

[Zwinmar]

I wasn't even thinking really of having line infantry when I first thought up the Thyrs. Yeah they do need garrison troops and guard forces but was thinking of being primarily a cavalry force patrolling the plains, hence why I went with the winged hussar analog, only for others to copy them as well.

Also looking at spending a reasonable fraction of the army points on the logistics train. To represent the basically roman roads etc..

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm thinking of putting a lot of my points into powerful magical artifacts, since my people like magic and I have a low population.

And I'll add artifacts to the rules right now before doing a proof-reading.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Sorry for the delay, I was travelling all bloody day.

So, Simon: my thoughts on the ships points costs, yeah, I figured they were overly-expensive, I ballparked the numbers to fit into the 80,000 points I had left and waited to see what everyone else thought about values. Would 600 points for a frigate and 1500 for a two-decker be more reasonable? And maybe 400 for a 20-gun sloop (with 24 pdr guns). Duly noted on the swivel guns, I'll cut them down to 6 pdr weapons.

The extremely heavy gun armament might justify that high point value for a sloop. Personally I'd rate the liners at around 1200 (or twice whatever your heavy frigates punch at). A normal (e.g. 32 or 36-gun) frigate would be more like 400-500, with a normal sloop being no more than 200 points or so. Your sloops are heavily overgunned and I might bump them to 300 (point value isn't just a linear function of cannon power).

Ok I'll go with 1200 for a liner, 500 for a frigate and 300 for a sloop.

Oh, and I gave up on using the weight-reducing magic to give a speed boost when you pointed out it wouldn't work as I thought it would, instead we're doing the copper-bottom thing, but with an inbuilt enchantment to keep the copper plates a) in place, b) smooth and c) free of barnacles etc.

The entire point of copper bottoms is that they remain smooth and are grim death to barnacles. They stay in place pretty well by nonmagical means but magical augmentation can't hurt. Also, the weight reduction magic will help if applied strategically to the right parts of the ship- particularly the heavy artillery on the gundeck. Someone who knows more about ships than me (TimothyC being the obvious candidate) could help more.

It's just that the behavior of a ship at sea is far more complicated from an engineering standpoint than the simple F=ma behavior of a rocketship in deep space. Moreover, acceleration is not top speed, and the top speed of a ship is a function of a complicated equilibrium between a variety of different forces, some of which become actively more powerful the faster the ship goes.

One asset Orion may have that helps them build Very Fast Ships is just plain good math and science, because they may know at least the basic principles of hydrodynamics and have the concept of testing hulls in scale models in order to optimize the design. This is historically not something anybody did prior to the 1800s but it's very much in keeping with the spirit of Orion and doesn't really unbalance the game the way that steam locomotives would.

The guns themselves are using the Technomancy weight-reducing stuff, and I can say that there is some useage of it in the frames, so allow my ships to sustain fifteen to seventeen knots (for frigates and sloops) and twelve or thirteen for the liners. I like the idea of having a better grasp of mathematics and hull forms and scale model testing, this does make sense since I think my ships have longer gundecks than was typical for the time.

On the point cost per troopers, I interpreted "1 point per musket-armed militiaman" to mean a conscript/new recruit, whereas my troops are professional volunteer soldiers who serve and train for years, while the Shock Infantry are the Regimental Elite troops. And yeah, they are armed with muskets, though proper rifles are in development. But if people think it's more reasonable, I can lower it to 1.25 for Line Infantry and 1.5/1.75 for Shock Infantry.

I went with the idea that one point is a Well Armed Man- a soldier who is competent and effective and in no way particularly inadequate, but who also doesn't have any special advantages or protections beyond what we in this world would think of as 'normal.'

Otherwise it just encourages point inflation.

Hey I'm happy to have my guys only cost one point per man, that lets me have more soldiers

As for the number of artillery guns, yeah I know I'm heavy on guns, but since I have basically the best arty in the world so far I might as well make use of it. Yes, the guns are heavier than normal, even with the Technomancy so they are less mobile, which is another reason why I have more guns to make up for the lack of mobility.

The big problem is that your artillery arm is going to be excessive, to the point where it actively bogs down your army, places ridiculous constraints on the supply train, and otherwise creates awkwardness. A large artillery piece will need something like ten or fifteen pounds of gunpowder per shot, and gunpowder gets expensive in large quantity, so just firing a full barrage from one of your brigade-sized regiments' artillery, once, would use up 1/4 to 1/3 of a ton of expensive, magically augmented gunpowder.

Plus, of course, this heavy artillery is not going to be easy to employ in maneuver warfare, and will led itself to very static, plodding tactics. Extremely effective in a siege with secure lines of supply, but you may find yourself in a position where much of your army is doing almost literally nothing but guarding cannons and supplies of powder and shot to stop the enemy from interfering with your supplies.

I reiterate, you have three times as many guns per man as Napoleon, and Napoleon used his artillery very extensively to devastating effect despite having smaller guns than you do.

Hmm...ok then, would 25 guns per Regiment be more reasonable than 50? Especially if I only made them Technomantic 18 pdrs rather than the big 36 pdrs. With the weight-lifting enchantment they should be around the same weight as standard 6 pdr field guns or horse artillery.

2I'll keep the big Technomantic 36 pdrs for use in my extensive border fortifications instead

[Simon_Jester]

E_F, your heavy frigates are powerful enough to credibly be worth ~600 points in my opinion; they significantly outgun both historical 44-gun heavy frigates and the more common 32 to 36 gun frigates of the Age of Sail.

Seventeen knots is pushing it for a sailing ship no matter how the ship operates, except under very ideal conditions for short periods of time. The historical records for clipper ships over short distances were a little over 20 knots, but that was running squarely before an extremely powerful wind, with so much sail on that an ordinary ship would be actively endangered, and with a hull design that would be poorly suited for either warfare or bulk cargo shipping. Over longer distances they couldn't sustain that.

By contrast, the liners of the pre-Napoleonic era were fortunate to make ten knots if that, so far as I can recall.

25 guns per roughly five thousand soldiers would be five guns per thousand men, which is in keeping with Napoleonic ratios, for an artillery-heavy army. Napoleon favored fewer guns per man himself, but he tended to then take every gun in his whole army and concentrate it on a single point in the enemy lines to compensate. "Grand battery" tactics had their advantages and disadvantages.

Whether you choose 36pdr guns that weigh like 12pdrs, but eat up lots of powder and can really only move at (slow) infantry speed, or whether you choose lighter guns that eat less powder and can be moved faster, is up to you. Personally I'd take a mix. Indeed, my army would have a mix except that my field artillery is standardized on 4pdr guns that are all pretty darn light.

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Romulan...

Honestly, artifacts, like artillery pieces, are simply things that you fight with. Just like war golems or ships or anything else. They cost points appropriate to how dangerous and badass they are. Points are points are points; it doesn't matter what you spend them on and you don't need special rules to cover them.

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Zwinmar...

You also don't need to spend points on a road network any more than I need to spend points on the fact that my nation dug what is OTL the Miami and Erie Canal. Also what is OTL the Wabash and Erie Canal, with a few... significant modifications to keep the canal from being eaten by muskrats.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Simon:

Ok, I'll cut speeds down to 15 max for the frigates and sloops and 12 max for the liners. I've upped Frigates to 600 points as you suggested. As for my Army Artillery, I've said that of the 5 five-gun Batteries in a Regiment, two are "field" guns of 36pdr size, whilst three are "light" guns of 18 pdr size.

So with some minor adjusting of values, my new total military size is:

21 Army Regiments (10,125 points each, 5040 men): 212,625 points, 105,840 men
Praetorian Guard (4 points per man): 6000 points, 1500 men
12 Battleships (1200 points per ship): 14,400 points
70 Frigates (600 points per ship): 42,000 points
100 Sloops (300 points per ship): 30,000 points
Total Points: 305,045 points

So yeah, slightly lower cost per man and ship combined with fewer guns lets me take 2 more Battleships and 3 more Army Regiments, hooray!

Nice thing is, with how heavily gunned my sloops are they can probably reliably take on and engage enemy Frigates on even terms, so I basically have 173 Heavy and Light Frigates to play with

EDIT: Yes I know I'm over-budget slightly, but it's only 1.6%

[The Romulan Republic]

Romulan...

Honestly, artifacts, like artillery pieces, are simply things that you fight with. Just like war golems or ships or anything else. They cost points appropriate to how dangerous and badass they are. Points are points are points; it doesn't matter what you spend them on and you don't need special rules to cover them.

Oh, I wasn't thinking of introducing elaborate rules around artifacts. Why the hell would I? My thinking from the start has been to try to keep this reasonably simple. I just am adding them to the list of things that cost points.

Although this would be for special/unusual artifacts, ones which aren't attached to a specific unit. If something is a standard part of a soldier's gear, then its counted as part of their cost, just like their gun or sword. If an artifact is possessed by a specific powerful being, then its counted as part of their cost.