Army

Work in progress

Introduction to the concept
The core idea behind the system is that manpower should cost to field and maintain; and not only the fraction in active duty. Broadly speaking, historically, manpower was not meant to be some farmer conscripted and given a weapon. Although this too happened, there was usually some training involved. The longer a soldier was trained and drilled, the better he performed both in battle but also in the various duties that life on campaign demands.

With that in mind, the aim of the system is twofold. The first being to simulate the reality of states having to choose between the two extremes that are a free but unprofessional army, loyal to local powerbrokers and an expensive army which is loyal to the central government. The second is to make such a system feel rewarding by enabling the player to gather resources and invest in building up the military and attaching consequences to military casualties. Beyond losing tax payers, you are also losing trained, experienced men, that it took years to bring to the level they were, and who you are now forced to replace with green ones.

Manpower, Skill and recruitable population
In MEIOU & Taxes 3.0, every province has four different sources that recruit and maintain a manpower pool: The Nobles, the Burghers, the Tribals and the State. They convert fighting age population into trained manpower, and maintain this trained manpower at a skill level appropriate for the country's army.

The entire system of manpower's skill revolves around the idea that each and every source of manpower has a "standard" and good requirements. The more good requirements are met for an adequate amount of time the more the manpower's skill will increase until it reaches said "standard", which is what their max possible skill is. Each source of manpower has different values for max possible skill and good requirements. Some sources have low a "standard" but are cheaper while others have the potential to be highly professional forces but are expensive. So in summary: manpower demands goods and if these demands are met skill is maintained or increased.

The powerbrokers' access to fighting age population is defined by their power and their rights. They spend a set portion, up to 4%, of their wealth to maintain trained manpower. If this is fully maintained, the rest is used to recruit new trained manpower from the fighting age population. The country can then tap into the powerbrokers' trained manpower through provincial levy laws.

Example 1: Under certain conditions, nobles offer high skill manpower though extremely limited in numbers (knights) while the majority of the army is made up of levies, feudal -loyal to the nobility †- and peasant -loyal to the central government ‡. Noble manpower is free* as nobles have already paid for the training and recruirment seeing how it's their manpower and they are borrowing it to the central government. The drawback being that the state then has little manpower of its own and nobles can turn disloyal. † ‡ ''The difference between feudal and peasant levies is who they are loyal to. This is decided by who owns the land they work before getting drafted. So in a province where the state owns no resources, no peasant levies can exist. Owning more land means more men to potentially turn into levies.'' * ''Free is potentially misleading here. Nobles take wealth from peasants that work their land and part of the reforms address this. In any case the point is that it's not coming out the treasury of the government.

State recruitment, like taxes, works by setting a quota for how much trained manpower is demanded, then fulfilling that as much as possible. The expected cost of this quota is shown as the army maintenance slider in the economy menu. Reducing army maintenance reduces available funds for manpower maintenance and recruitment.

If the maintenance cost cannot be met, skill will drop accordingly. Below 50% maintenance, trained manpower is released.

Example 2: Conscription is the most expensive because i) You are the one and only one who pays for it ii) It targets a large number of recruits iii) It has a relatively high max possible skill and good requirements

In Detail
Each manpower(MP) tax has a max it can collect, which is usually based on some variable. Once a tax becomes available to the player, the max is set by a formula. The player can then set the tax to high, medium or low, with high aiming for the max possible number of men, while lower means less men but more efficient use of each military mana point.

The series of Nobles' rights Military Organisation, interacts with some of the MP taxes. Those rights don't unlock any new MP tax but they are part of the requirements for the reforms -Military Service- which unlock the more advanced MP taxes.

Levies
''"Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,

''Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch?

''Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine

''Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?"''

The High Middle Ages. That's when the game starts. Each province has population divided into classes. One of those classes are the Nobles. The Nobles of each province have a power and a loyalty metric, both ranging from 0-100%. To represent the interpersonal relations that defined many of the settled peoples and the polities they formed, in regards to the military, use of these two metrics is made.

There are two kinds of levies depending on who owns the land, that the people getting drafted, worked on. Nobles offer noble levies and the state, peasant levies.

The size of the levies is a function of power and property held. Military Organisation rights also affect levy size directly. They put a maximum capacity on both kinds of levies and that capacity goes down as higher levels of Military Organisation are passed, until levies can be raised no more.

Nobles will try to get as much as they can based on the budget they have for troops which depends on their wealth. The player can ask them for the right to use their levies which is handled like a tax, called "Noble Dues" and like any tax they can be set to low, medium or high.

The army of the State
''"Witness this army of such mass and charge

''Led by a delicate and tender prince,

''Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd

''Makes mouths at the invisible event,

''Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death and danger dare"

"It's not a country with an army, but an army with a state." and "L'État, c'est moi." some of you might be thinking. Whatever the case, bureaucracy is the name of script writer and the conscripts are the puppets. Bureaucracy in this case means both state reach (SR) and reforms which increase the potential recruitable population as a government breaks further and further away from the oaths of fealty model and the levies shrink.

In the case of state armies, Moving from lower to higher levels of Military Service allows use of advanced MP taxes. These are Volunteers -unlocked at level (2)-Volunteers- and Conscripts at -levels (3)-Enlistment and (4)-General Conscription. The difference between those two last levels is that in (4), a greater max portion of the population is potentially recruitable.

Tribal Hosts
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

Citizen's Militia
''"Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats

''Will not debate the question of this straw:

''This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,

''That inward breaks, and shows no cause without

''Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir."''

Citizen's militia requires at least level (5)-Extensive Charters of Urban Governance rights. Since these troops are funded by the Burghers, who are usually wealthy, they can be an important supplement to the army of trade republics, or other highly urbanised realms. The men are pulled from the Residents' class, of course. Higher levels of Urban Governance set a greater portion of the resident class as recruitable population.

Holy Orders (Not implemented yet)
''"Why then, God's soldier be he!

''Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

''I would not wish them to a fairer death:

And so, his knell is knoll'd."

WIP