[Discuss] Armies and food

[Robert Croson, Jr]

I split this off the Dwilight thread, which was getting way off the 
opriginal topic...

On 14 Jan 2008 at 10:02, John P. Murphy wrote:

> I could easily see 500 active well-paid soldiers eating more than  
> 2000 or so peasants, sure.  More than that, soldiers buy the *best*  
> food in the region.  They buy (or take!) meat (the production of  
> which often consumes other food in the region), fruit, and fish when  
> the peasants are eating grain, beans, and root vegetables.  They  
> drive up prices on food, because the merchants know that the soldiers  
> have plenty of gold to burn.  And because they don't have permanent  
> kitchens/homesteads, they waste food.

Hmm.... Not so sure about that. The life of a soldier, outside of 
when they were actualy fighting, which was rare, was mostly the 
time-honored past-time of soldiers throughout history: Loafing off! 
They didn't train and drill on a constant basis. They sat around at 
garrison duty, or beating the local populace into shape, or 
standing sentry duty, etc. Not exactly strenuous duty. I would 
think that a soldiers average day was actually an easier one than 
most farmers, who engaged in daily back-breaking labor to 
survive.

When you do train your soldiers, you have to pay extra for that 
training time. You can take that extra gold as covering your 
soldiers extra food. After all, it doesn't cover the cost of 
equipment, as that accrues and is paid for separately.

While I might disagree about the amount of food that a soldier 
might eat as opposed to a farmer, I do agree that it should have 
some impact on the region. And it does currently have an impact, 
in that the soldiers eat the locals food.

If we are going to increase that, then I would suggest some of the 
following mechanics be altered to accommodate it:

1) If there is no hunger in the region, then the time lost to foraging 
should be minimal. It shouldn't be hard for the soldiers to find 
food, all they have to do is go to the local town/village and 
buy/take a cow and a sack of grain.

2) If there is hunger/starvation in the region, then the soldiers 
should be spending more time on foraging for food. Perhaps add 
it to the options that the TLs have. They can spend their spare 
hours foraging instead of waiting/training. Let the player send hist 
troops out to forage for X hours. The longer they spend, the more 
likely they are to find food, and stave off the effects of hunger for 
their troops for that day.

3) Allow the local lord to have some control over the availibility of 
food. Let him either open his storehouses to the army 
reduce/eliminate foraging by using the regions stores, or close 
them and force the army to forage. This would allow the local 
lords and banker to help support the army by sending food to the 
regions in the army's path. Perhaps allow them to reduce the 
amount consumed by the peasants and allocate food directly to 
the army, reduce foraging time at the cost of starving the region?

4) As it is now, nobles who have the forethought to bring 
caravans of food with them should suffer less time lost to 
foraging.

5) If a trader with caravans accompanies the army, the trader 
should be given the option to set his caravans to supply the army 
or not. Opens up the possibility for traders to do their thing, and 
makes them a desirable think to have around, as well.

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