Gordook
26-10-2003, 08:18
I don't mean to complicate the game here, but I wanted to mention some realism that faced fuedal society. The main commodity in fuedal times were peasants. The peasants worked the land and manned the battlefields, but before a couple of improvements in society, ie new plows and a change in diet, there wasn't much of a surplus of peasants, hence the reason you didn't have cities and town sprouting all over the landscape. Once the population started growing beans as the primary crop, you started having healthier people therefore MORE peasants, plus the improvement in plows meant it took less peasants to work the land. That is when you started seeing standing armies, cities and the rise of the middle class, but that is also when you saw the fall of the fuedal system and that was beyond the timeline of this game.
I hope you enjoyed the history class, now here is my point. There were not any standing armies in the fuedal system. A king granted a noble his lands and in return, that noble was obligated to serve the kings for a set period of time each year. A bit like our reserve service today. The noble would serve or send in knights to serve in his place. This would consist of guard duty at the kings court or such. In time of war, the king would call upon his nobles and raise an army. Depending on the loyalty of the nobles would determine the size of the army raised. Once the war was over, the nobles and peasants would return home to work the land. The king would grant new lands to minor nobles and knights.
Another factor, and this is my last point, was that the fuedal system was NOT centralized. The king's power was only as strong his nobles who ruled the actual territories. The further away a territory was from the king's court, the less power he wielded in that territory.
One game that represented this and may be a good model was Medieval Lords, Soldier Kings of Europe, 1991 by SSI.
That was my two pence. Anyone can build massive armies and steam-roll over their enemies, but then you have just another RTS 'strategy' game.
I hope you enjoyed the history class, now here is my point. There were not any standing armies in the fuedal system. A king granted a noble his lands and in return, that noble was obligated to serve the kings for a set period of time each year. A bit like our reserve service today. The noble would serve or send in knights to serve in his place. This would consist of guard duty at the kings court or such. In time of war, the king would call upon his nobles and raise an army. Depending on the loyalty of the nobles would determine the size of the army raised. Once the war was over, the nobles and peasants would return home to work the land. The king would grant new lands to minor nobles and knights.
Another factor, and this is my last point, was that the fuedal system was NOT centralized. The king's power was only as strong his nobles who ruled the actual territories. The further away a territory was from the king's court, the less power he wielded in that territory.
One game that represented this and may be a good model was Medieval Lords, Soldier Kings of Europe, 1991 by SSI.
That was my two pence. Anyone can build massive armies and steam-roll over their enemies, but then you have just another RTS 'strategy' game.