Yep -- but what I was looking at was not a way to revise the entire game -- but rather a "fix" (albeit partial and unable to balance the basic imbalance of heavies having twice the STR and CON of lights) that could actually be played using the current game system and player self-regulation. I.e., given the basic premise "the underlying mechanics are not going to be changed", what fairly straightforward, player-manageable changes could be made to get better flavor and indeed force some differences between armies based on resources available.
Though I dislike the idea of "wooden" weapons, one could adjust my idea so that metal was only required for heavies -- and instead require leather armor for light troops instead of not requiring any armor. I.e. LC and LI could be recruited with wooden weapons and no armor, while HC and HI would require bronze or better for both weapons and armor as noted. That might be a better solution rather than requiring LC and LI to have bronze weapons.
Note that even within the base armor rank values, "heavy" vs "light" can be justified due to types of armor -- although somewhat unrealistic since both require just 1 unit of metal or leather, you can at least envision that "heavy" armor is more of a "full suit" of armor while "light" armor is more of a "half suit" if worn at all. So if one did recruit LC with bronze armor (perhaps because there was not enough bronze to do HC but the player still wanted to have better armor) it would still be lighter armor than that worn by a HC trooper.
With cavalry, of course, another easily explained difference -- even though it is not reflected in the resources required -- is that of the mounts, there are lighter faster mounts useable for LC and heavier mounts useable for HC, and that helps account for the basic STR and CON difference to some extent.
Everyone knows, of course, armor is more worth spending metal on than weapons -- many players will use metal for armor on their heavies anyway, without any rule requiring it -- at least when they can. By requiring heavies to have metal weapons as well as metal armor, and perhaps allowing lights to have wooden weapons, that would at least mean a higher investment cost for heavies than for lights, even though the actual return on that investment in metal weapons is not that great-- so the metal is helping pay for the fact that inherently double STR and CON is a bigger factor than it should be... The program still penalizes light troops in that they have half the base STR and CON, cannot be recruited any faster than the heavies, and eat just as much -- but the fact that logistically it would be harder to recruit heavies at a lot of locations would mean that, in essence, many nations would find that to recruit as many troops as they wanted to each turn, they would in fact end up having to choose where to recruit the heavies, where they might be able to recruit light cavalry, and where it might even be worth recruiting light infantry, archers or men-at-arms.
A nation with hire for free could still hire armies at a lot of population centers at once, easily -- but arranging for enough metal at all of them to be able to hire heavies at each would require either a lot of metal purchasing at those locations or a lot of 947/948 combinations...so more likely, armies of HC or LC might be hired in some of the plains pop centers, armies of HI hired in some of the mountain pop centers, and in some places with lots of people but where the rsources were just not stockpiled or able to be purchases, hiring whatever local militia (light infantry or archers) or mercenaries (men-at-arms) were willing to bring their own equipment to the muster. Got 5 Cities? Might be able to consistently recruit HC at one of them by keeping a supply of leather, mounts and steel available, and HI at another by shipping bronze there, but at the other 3, hire LI, AR or MA so as to at least add some extra numbers to the nation's armed forces... Some nations might still manage to focus only on one type of heavy troop and do it well, but would be risking getting outnumbered...
Anyway -- rather than trying to rework the program, I was looking at this from a perspective of "what sort of change in play could more properly reflect the realities of recruiting heavy, light and other troop types" -- what relatively simple change might be made within the existing rules and programming. Just as we have games where there is no kidnapping or assassination allowed, we could have a game where no recruiting of heavy troops is allowed that would result in a weapon or armor rank lower than 30.
It would be pretty tough to enforce, of course. And the program itself allows armor and weapons to be built and then added to the troops later. One might modify my proposal to say "troops in training do not need to be flly equipped, but an army cannot move out of its garrison unless all heavies have at least bronze weapons and armor." This might work better for defensive purposes and be easier to enforce as well. Any time an army fights a battle NOT at its own pop center, any heavy troops in that army should have to have 30+ (bronze or better) weapon and armor ranks. So one could indeed hire or recruit heavy troops with less than bronze equipment, but have to send metal to be made into weapons and armor and upgrade the troops at some point before being able to move out as an actual field army. Such "training" armies could be called upon to defend their pop center using their "practise" wooden weapons in an emergency -- but this could be a way to simulate the idea that it may take longer to train and equip the heavy troops. Such armies could even move from on home pop center to another -- move from basic training camp to advanced training camp say -- so that for defensive purposes, heavies could be recruited with wooden weapons and no armor...
But the more you come up with exceptions to the idea, the less useful the idea is in making folks make the tough decisions on how to manage their recruitment -- so the players would have to be willing to sign up knowing that they would be voluntarily limiting their recruitment of troops according to the scenario parameters. The simpler the parameters, the better, in terms of playability.
So instead of modifying the light troop types at all, simply have the rule be this: "Any hiring or recruitment of heavy troops (HC and HI) may only be done if, after the hiring or recruitment into the army, that troop type has a minimum weapon and armor rank of 30." That would be a simple rule to follow (though possible to cheat on, the point would be that players should intend to abide by the rule when they signed up), and easy to verify whenever a battle was fought.
And yeah, there are a lot of things in the game that, looked at logically, don't make sense -- even if you ignore the 525/770/949 combo, it doesn't make much sense that a population suddenly changes race when captured from one race by the forces of another race. One way to rationalize that -- and I am I think fairly good at finding rationalizations for weird mechanics, after all I am playing this game still -- is that the conquest of a new pop center inspires people from the homeland to come to that location to sign up with the army, rather than actually having the new troops be supplied by the pop center itself -- after all, the population level never goes down from recruiting troops at it... I find it even tougher to imagine the possibility that a small number of charismatic individuals could over the course of two months expand a camp to a city...but that is another topic entirely. 
-- Ernie III
···
-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Brunet <bbme@rogers.com>
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 11:59 am
Subject: Re: [mepbmlist] Making Light Troops More Useful -- AKA Heavy Means Metal!
Troops types have different Str and Con values, though. By adding metals you
on't just get the additional value of higher numbers, you "bump up" your troops
to being inherently superior. The in-game balance against this is the
aintenance cost per troop type. In order to rework and maintain some semblance
of balance, all of these other variables would have to be in play - unless the
oal is to simply prolong the game via weaker armies. 2950 somewhat attempted
his, balancing the weaker armies with the weaker economies, albeit using the
ame program.
One old argument is to recruit Foot and Horse - and what you had to equip them
ith determined their "light" vs "heavy" designation.
A - A different spin on it is to consider that armies were always of various
ixed types. 2500 HI only?? How? Where? Who? Only in the most extreme
nd/or fantastical examples would such a force come together to march under a
ingle leader on a horse, yes?
B - Throw in the idea that the extra Str and Con for the "Heavy" troops should
ncur longer training times and only for qualified candidates, and one simply
houldn't be able to recruit 400 HI in the same pop that maxes your LI
ecruitment at the same 400. If you can recruit 400 Light troops, maybe you can
only recruit 200 Heavy troops.
Combine A and B together and you can develop a formula for recruiting based on
op size. Ie, at a camp (for ease of #'s) you issue Recruit Foot and you end up
with 10 HI, 30 LI, 20 AR and 40 MA - just to add to 100, for example. Issue
30-LI for 2 turns and poof, they turn into Heavy. Metals add as they do to
ither - give a 14 yr old farmer steel and he's still MA ...if in steel...
This opens up the concept of the Wing Commander (a phrase taken from a previous
How to Make the Game Better thread or article) where characters with command
kill emerged from the ranks of 1 or another discipline. A commander would come
with a troop type tag - that commander issuing the recruit order would skew
hose sample #'s above towards his designation. Or even, the better the
ommander, the #'s skew towards the Heavy side - you still get 100 troops, but
hey're better trained, thus "stronger" for example.
But all that takes the concept of the Training parameter out the window as *it*
s rolled into troop type.
What else is all this dependent on? What other variables are in play? Would
uch changes make this particular aspect of the game "more realistic" yet still
llow game play to follow essentially the same path/patterns?
Consider, you 525 a Mordor City and are then able within the same turn/2 week
eriod to 770 500 Elven archers, and if you want, 949 the pop to your Dwarf ally
who can 408 500 Dwarven HI the next turn if his army moves in. Let's not even
et into the magic flying caravans shuttling 10,000 timber from every corner of
iddle Earth to 2924 every second turn to continually rebuild that bridge for
ondor to keep sending thousands of Heavy troops across.....
What would be of interest from a large project perspective, would be to simple
ake all the orders into account in sequence, and rework them all symbiotically
long the lines of being "more realistic". Laurence Tilley did that to some
xtent, if anyone recalls, with his 2nd Edition work from much discussion years
go. Reviewing some of those threads, I see many contributors who are no longer
around.
http://www.lgtilley.co.uk/2nded.htm
From: Ernie III <DrakaraGM@aol.com>
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, August 29, 2010 3:14:52 AM
Subject: [mepbmlist] Making Light Troops More Useful -- AKA Heavy Means Metal!
This idea has been kicking around in my head for a while, it would require
players to self-regulate their troop recruitment orders, but I think it would
make the game more interesting in terms of realistic recruitment requirements
for light and heavy troops, and at the same time make archers and men-at-arms,
troops that bring their own equipment when recruited, more likely to be
recruited in some instances.
The basic idea is that, in reality, since the bronze age, no heavy troops ever
really were recruited that didn't have at least some metal as part of their
armor -- and pretty much all weapons were at least partly metal, most effective
weapons were mostly metal. In game mechanics, just like it takes leather and
mounts in stores to recruit cavalry, all troops other than AR and MA would
require some additional resources to be recruited. Thus hiring or recruiting
troops would involve more logistics except for the AR and MA which are as noted
self--equipped. The requirement would be that, after any recruiting or hiring
of one of those troop types, the troops in the army would have to satisfy a
minimum weapon rank of 30, and for HC and HC they would have to satisfy a
minimum armor rank of 30 as well.
So for example if hiring a new army of 400 HI at a major town, the 770 order
would have to have br, st or mi weapons, and br, st or mi armor. The easiest
would normally be to have shipped in or produced a pile of bronze or steel, and
recruit with all bronze, all steel, or possibly a mix of bronze and steel.
But when recruiting troops into an existing force, as long as the new recruits
do no bring the ranks below the minimum of 30 as appropriate, that would be
fine. So for example say a nation hired a new army of 400 HI with bronze
weapons and steel armor, but on the following turn, there was only 400 or so
units of bronze left, and less than 400 units of steel available. The army
could recruit another 400 HI, using the bronze for weapons and nothing for
armor. The 400 HI 30/30 would become 800 HI 30/30. But if the original army
was hired with just bronze and bronze, and there was another 400 bronze
available but nothing else, then the option would be to recruit 400 LI with
bronze weapons, or recruit AR or MA at no materials cost, or to buy more bronze
or some steel in order to be able to recruit HI.
This should also reduce the number of nations fielding significant hordes of HC
-- it is already somewhat difficult to arrange for the leather and mounts
needed, except for nations or teams with Conjure Mounts ability. But the need
for metal weapons and armor for HC, and at least metal weapons for LC, will
ake
alternatives more appealing to some -- and require others who wish to remain
ll
elite HC to spend additional resources, orders etc. to properly equip those HC.
Basically, there would be no more allegedly superior swarms of heavy cavalry,
o
called Dunedain Knights etc. -- with wooden sticks for "weapons" and normal
riding clothes for "armor". Don't have metal and cannot afford much? Those
conjuring nations can still brobably field mobile armies of LC, just need to
uy
some bronze or steel for their weapons, and maybe when more is available,
recruit some HC for the shock troops. Want to hire armies all over the place?
Use the resources that are available in the pop centers, or hire MA or AR if no
resources are available. Got a bunch of mountain pop centers but no real
ounts
or leather production? Should be fairly easy to hire or recruit HI, with
perhaps a few LI, AR or MA depending on current stores and production where the
troops are being mustered. Out in the plains, with lots of leather production
and Conjure Mounts? Sell food, buy some metal and do cavalry, HC or LC as
etal
is available.
When your troop types have broadswords, shortswords, scimitars, battle-axes,
wouldn't it be nice to know that, yes, they ARE made of metal, and the nation
s
not sending out thousands of supposed soldiers and knights with wooden clubs?
-- Ernie III
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