Province Size?
 

How big are provinces?
I am trying to imagine this and am having problems. On the one hand, a province must be large enough to encompass at least one decent size town and take a troop of, say, 20 one month to move through it. On the other hand, it must be small enough so that a province defence of, say, 10-20 men can patrol it and automatically meet any force moving in; it must be small enough so that an invading army of, say, 10-20 men automatically meet up with some defending force of, say, 10-20 men on some field.
This seems incompatible. But I want to try to figure it out.
I think provinces which are portrayed in the “world” map are much too large – a PD of 3 can never patrol an area the size of Wales – or Texas – and hope to meet up with anything. What are the chances of you successfully finding a friend with whom you agree to meet “next Thursday” in “New York City”, or “Chinatown”? You’ll never find her.
No, provinces have to be smaller.
But now let us imagine something like... some Alms somewhere between Unterammagau and Oberammagau. Unterammagau has a population of about 5,000, Oberammagau of about 15,000. It would be unlikely that a troop of 10 men would meet up with an enemy troop of 10 men on some alm there, but if you give them a month, it is sure to happen. Perhaps a patrolling PD force of 10 would have a chance of finding incoming strangers, given a month of time. Yet it takes about 1 to 1 and a half hours to walk between the two. Let’s say it would take 5 hours to walk if wearing full plate mail and carrying all your gear, that at a slow pace and looking for enemies hiding behind cows and trees and whatnot. But not a month. (Province type: Farmlands, Mountains.) In a month, even heavily armed troops can move from Texas to Nevada.
So it seems that a province is either too small to limit troop movement to anything under 10 and too large to give troops a snowball’s chance in hell of finding one another.
So what do you think?

Re: Province Size?
 

I always think of a province as being the size of a US county. That would also seem to about fit the "beginnings of medieval" 1-castle small made-myself-king province, which later became duke-doms swearing fealty to one of the kings?

Re: Province Size?
 

Not an expert on medieval populations, but 10,000 is a lot of people for, say, a 12th century English county, unless it contained a large city. Wilderness regions like, say, the Auvergne in France, could easily have a couple thousand folks scattered over hundreds of square miles. OTOH, China had many cities of over 100,000 at that time, and a couple over 1,000,000.

My handwave is to accept that individual units of normal troops are actually company-sized (i.e., 100 men). Then large scale battles of 200+ units might be armies of 20,000, which is about right for the biggest medieval land battles. Magical units are what they are, of course. But it's easier to imagine that dispossessed spirits are company-sized, while a Lord of Hell is just one bad mutha----a.

Re: Province Size?
 

Hmm, let's see. Typical infantry can move through two friendly no-terrain penalty provinces in a month. Assuming that a typical infantry unit can traverse 15 miles in one day, that would come to 450 miles in one month.

So a typical province should be about 225 miles across.

Of course, the 15 miles in one day might be high. If you factor in the time spent on making encampments and foraging, it could easily drop to 10 miles per day. This would reduce province size to 150 miles across.

Gandalf's probably right for counties in the Western U.S. In the eastern part of the country, it would be about five counties or so in size.

Re: Province Size?
 

I would like to think of it as a county as well, since this feels right in terms of population, magic sites, etc.

However, militia and heavy troops can only move 1 province in a month. If such a unit can march only 10 miles per day (which is shabby), that would still be about 300 miles a month, or about 450 kilometers.

That is somewhere between the breadth of England and Germany.

See what I mean? Either province is too small to allow meaningful map-movement restrictions, or it is too large to be a platform which can handle PD and battles.

Re: Province Size?
 

OK but do we have any choice? Should movement be more restricted? A game like this doesnt like to keep information from one turn to the next. It wants to read the info for each turn processing. So if we made it that "forest" ability allowed movement of 1 province a day, and non-forest capable moving thru forest areas took 2 or 3 turns to do it, I think we are looking at an entirely new non-PbEM style game.

Which they can do if they want but I think it would be another game, not an "improvement" of this one. (Not arguing, just thinking as Im typing)

Re: Province Size?
 

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear.

There is one other option, of course, which is purely for RPG purposes, but which I am bringing up because the dev team has let slip the "aging" principle for dom3....

*Turns represent 1 week, not 1 month.* (Or even: 1 day)

Re: Province Size?
 

The german version of the Wikipedia article about the battle of Kadesh says that one of Ramses II major mistakes was to have the divisons of his army marching 10km apart from each other and states that this meant a whole day of marching at that time, thus preventing the latter divions (who were just marching along the path of the previous devision) to reach the battle!!! The army consisted of 4 mixed divisions, each counting 5000 men. Well, you never know about wikipedia's truth, but I believe that one so far...

One should also consider that heavy rain, snowfall, etc. might furthermore prohibit marching at all!

Then I think there was a delay due to wait for short-range scouting: Where can the army pass? Where are suitable places for the night? Could there be places for ambushes?

The lack of proper roads poses another problem: An army of 5000 cannot march like ducklings one after the other along a mere trail. So how do they cross smaller rivers (I suppose Dom2-Maps show only major rivers, but not smaller brooks which already present a problem in the absence of big bridges!) or hills??? I thought armies of those times were sometimes even required to breach their way through smaller forests, no?

I am not speaking of mountain or forest provinces, since I suppose that "plain"-terrain type entails terrain having some smaller woods, smaller rivers (floodplains), dales and hills, but not a real huge wild forest without any trails! Likewise I imagine mountain provinces to be like the alps. BTW, how long did it took Hannibal to cross the alps?

I am no military expert and neither am I a historian, but by the considerations above I doubt that a roman army could traverse the breadth of england or german in a single month. Thus I guess that this all severly limits the size of those provinces even further. Also, not all provinces are of the same size, so some are easier to traverse than others, despite having the same terrain modifier. Who is an experts for mediaeval warfare here? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Province Size?
 

I got this little bit of info from this site:

I presume this speed was over a Roman road, rather than rough terrain. It also mentions that a legion was expected to begin a campaign with 16 days' rations, which, along with other equipment, weighed in at somewhere between 66 and 93 pounds (30-41 kg). So, theoretically, in sixteen days, a legion cold march ~480 kilometers (300 miles) without resupply. I imagine that actual pace was slower, since sustaining that kind of speed over that long would probably kill the unit as a fighting force.

Re: Province Size?
 

Impressive! Maybe strat move should change during summer and winter. That would make a nice complex addition to the game. Maybe non-storm-fliers should be grounded in winter as well...!

Re: Province Size?
 

Well, the game already has seasons and years (3 turns/season, 12/year)... It seems you have quite long weeks (or days) in there! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Province Size?
 

That doesn't make much sense, winter isnt a perpetual storm, its just really cold (and possibly rainy or snowy or windy etc.)

Re: Province Size?
 

Or maybe allow them to move, but only TOWARDS THE EQUATOR of a given map. Assuming the earth isn't flat.

Re: Province Size?
 

Actually, after giving it a little more consideration, you're right. Ten miles a day is pretty low. It should probably be double that figure, assuming an average marching speed of 2 to 2.5 miles per hour over a period of 8 to 10 hours, which yields a range of 16 to 25 miles per day. So the province size should be about 600 miles. Which would be like marching across Texas.

Re: Province Size?
 

Thinking about it, most of Dom2 troops resemble that of the 1000-1250 era. From http://www.battle1066.com/:
"Harold quickly assembled his housecarls and fyrd and in a legendary march of nearly 200 miles, covered in five days he made camp about 20 km south west of York around or in Tadcaster. .... He was three hundred miles from Hastings with a depleted if not defeated force. How was he too defend the country now? Whatever went through his mind, he decided by the 2nd October to march south again. In a historic march he arrived in London on the 6th October 1066. Harold stayed in London only until the 11th October 1066 before marching towards Hastings with his men. On the 13th October 1066 he camped on Caldbec Hill, 10 km north of Hastings. Here the most famous English battle would be fought."
York => London ~330km
London => Hastings ~100km
So Harold marched his troops ~750km within three weeks (and they shurely wouldn't have marched any more during the rest of the month). But this is deemed "legendary", and nothing a sane commander would have attempted without the necessity to counter an immediate threat.

mmh, what about a "forced march option" in DOM3, which lets the troops move further per turn, but let them start a battle with 10 points fat.?

Re: Province Size?
 

Hmm, I should have read the intervening posts. Makes my last one moot.

Re: Province Size?
 

I like the forced march idea. Adding weather effects is also good. Weather shouldn't prohibit movement, but should certainly slow it.

Re: Province Size?
 

It took me 72 days (three days of rest included IIRC) to cover the 1000 miles from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela carrying about 10-15 kg. I bought food every day and slept in pilgrim shelters. Roads were good and straight and the few times we travelled on old roman roads pace slowed down. Rain also had a very strong effect on how fatigued you were at the end of the day. 8 hours in good weather or 9 hours marching in constant rain has tremedous effects on your morale http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

We travelled about 15 miles a day. I would imagine an army would travel about 5-10 miles a day. Break camp etc takes time. Carrying supplies is a chore. You get the picture.

There is no consistency of scales in Dominions. To build or besiege a fortress in months is silly. A population of a couple of thousand inhabitants in a province that takes a month to cross is also silly. An army of 300 units is also silly. We wanted to incorporate many features in the game. This is not possible unless you break some conventions. The current compromise tries to give some semblance of realism, but it is more intended to make for an interesting game than an overly realistic simulation of mythical warfare http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Province Size?
 

Sure, and I think no one really argues with that! Nevertheless I found this thread to be very interesting (and maybe a bit off-topic). It is also a good task for our imagination to come up with some consistent explanations for the observed... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Province Size?
 

Indeed!
(I hope you don't mind me posting these "philosophical" questions every now and then.
It is like my post about "Dominion and Believers" (if there is a population of 0, who is there to believe in you so that your dominion will be anything above 0) -- I am not complaining! No one is complaining that, say, in the armies of Rome no-one ever cast a fireball...!)

Re: Province Size?
 

Being somewhat obsessive (aren't we all though?), I decided to check an historical event to see what would be a realistic distance for an army to cover. Being an American, I naturally chose an event from our history; the American Civil War. Sherman's march from Atlanta to Savannah took 28 days and covered a distance of 250 miles, which is an average of 9 miles a day.

This was form mid-November to mid December, which in the American South can be a somewhat rainy period.

In addition, Sherman's army did a lot of pillaging and burning along the way.

Re: Province Size?
 

@chazar: good and hard task i believe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

@thinktank: Philosophical questions are good. Perhaps a bit obsessive as bone daddy said, but still interesting.

@bone daddy: Most armies pillage. Else they starve. Only sissy players avoid pillaging http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Province Size?
 

This is why there should be an option to Pillage as you move, in order to simulate that kind of warfare. Thoughtout the course of a month, an army should be able to rape and pillage as they engage local defense and defensive positions.

Re: Province Size?
 

Re: Province Size?
 

Yeah, I've been playing Ermor AE in a SP game. Conquer a povince, crank the tax rate to 200% to piss-off the locals, then pillage and patrol it down to 0 pop. Really gets the income going.

Ermor AE seems too easy against the AI. Of course, I've only been playing the full version of Dom2 for acouple of months, so right now I have all of the AIs set to normal.

Re: Province Size?
 

Ermor AE and SG *are* too easy against the AI. It doesn't change it tactics, and the tactics it uses works badly against undead themes.