[Discuss] Armies and food

[John P. Murphy]

On Jan 14, 2008, at 12:01 PM, Robert Croson, Jr wrote:

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


Ah, thank you.  Good thinking.
	

> 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.


Oh sure, soldiers on garrison duty would be getting nice and fat  
doing nothing.  However, soldiers in an active unit would be doing  
quite a lot of marching.  My characters haven't seen battle in a  
while, but their units still tend to walk a few hundred miles every  
week.	

> 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.

This is true.  And you do explicitly pay more when taking your  
soldiers out to drink and feast.

I don't have much comment on the suggestions, but there was talk a  
while ago about offering baggage trains as a paraphernalia option.   
Was that ultimately rejected, or just put on hold?

John