[Discuss] Armies and food

[Robert Croson, Jr]

On 14 Jan 2008 at 14:40, John P. Murphy wrote:

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

> 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.	

Is marching five times more difficult than plowing a field, or 
spending every day from sunup to sundown working the land? In 
a region of 7,000 people, it wouldn't be surprising if over half of 
them were farmers or other such food growing/gathering 
profession. They didn't have much free time, it was allspent just 
staying alive.

But anyway, we have a difference of opinion on that, and there's 
no reason to tie up the list with it.

> > 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.

And when you train, too. It costs X gold to train your men, 
depending on the type of training, and the number of men. This 
isn't extra pay for your soldiers, you already pay them their salary. 
It would be ridiculous to have to pay them more for them to get up 
off their lazy butts and train. And it's not for equipment repairs, 
because their equipment takes damage. So what could it be? 
Expendables, I guess. Training dummies, practice swords, spare 
lances. (And extra food?)

> 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?

Caravans could be considered baggage trains. And you can 
already buy them. What else would you need in a baggage train?

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