Better Armies - Complete Combat, Retinue, & Building Overhaul (CK2+ Submod)

[Six Gun South]

Better Armies - Complete Combat, Retinue, & Building Overhaul (CK2+ & Vanilla Submod)

Better Armies - Complete Combat, Retinue, & Building Overhaul (Submod)
-Vanilla version compatible with 1.13 The Old Gods
-Compatible with CK2+ and integrated along with Millenium Mod, CV's Fixes, into CK2Plus: Kitchen Sink Edition

DESCRIPTION
The Better Armies mod seeks to be the comprehensive answer certain combat and army composition issues with CK2. This mod addresses problems such as over-sized armies, overpowered retinues, unbalanced combat, and lack of diversity in buildings.

MAJOR FEATURES

Spoiler

*New combat system that rewards high martial generals, and punishes generals with poor martial skill. Unique combat tactics for every culture.*

*3 unique retinues for each culture, no more generic retinues. Smaller, more expensive retinues.*

*Completely new building system, with mutually-exclusive branching trees. Build your fief how you like it.*

*Smaller, more diverse armies. Armies of different nations will now no longer be carbon copies of each other.*

Changelog

Spoiler

Version 1.24
-Implemented Battle Bunny's Conversion changes
-Updated to CV Fixes V5
-Fixed a bunch of random errors
-Removed levy size bonuses from city and temple buildings

CK2Plus Kitchen Sink Edition
Version 1.23
-Integrated CK2Plus 2.01.2, Millenium Mod, CV Fixes, and Better Armies into one file
-Made years 1000 thru 1066 playable
-Made compatible with patch 1.13
-Fixed a number of localisation errors
-Corrected a number of title/character problems that were preventing Trade Republics from working properly
-Fixed the most conspicuous major errors between years 1000 thru 1066
-Corrected some Combat Tactic errors

Version 1.22
-Made compatible with patch 1.12
-Added tax penalty to pagan rulers, reinstated levy bonus
-Removed pagan specific building chains
-Incorporated CaesarVincens CK2+ Fixes for CK2+ into Better Armies CK2Plus

Version 1.21
-Made compatible with 1.11 patch
-Added CK2+ compatible version

Version 1.2 - Vanilla only
-Made compatible with 1.10 patch & The Old Gods DLC
-Tweaked combat tactics to utilize the new 'steppe' terrain type
-Tweaked looting to be slower
-Fixed some retinue bugs and made compatible with new version
-Duct-taped building system onto new technology system (works for now, will need to go back and rework some things in the future)
-Removed Tengri & Norse levy size bonuses until I figure out how to implement a negative tax modifier on those religions to balance them out
-Shrunk Magyar starting army, removed bonus troops they receive after forming Hungary, and made starting stack non-inheritable. Once the starting King dies they disband, should keep Hungary from going hog-wild

Version 1.14
-Implemented terrain weighting to combat tactics. Now the terrain affects the chance that a commander will select certain tactics. (Ex. cavalry charges more likely on flat terrain). Cultural tactics have been weighted to their terrain of their homelands, so you will tend to roll better tactics in your native terrain, and worse tactics in different terrain
-Fixed Nestorian conversion bug for Mongols that converted far too many provinces to Nestorian religion
-Fixed other various Mongol bugs
-Fixed localisation errors
-Fixed a Sicilian melting pot error that caused too many buildings to be available for construction
-Buffed William the Bastard's starting army to give him a better chance at success in the Invasion of England
-Fixed some minor combat and retinue errors

Version 1.131 CK2+ Hotfix
-Fixed discrepancies between CK2Plus & Better Armies province files

Version 1.13
-Added compatibility with new CK2Plus version
-Frontloaded Pagan 'Raiding' buildings a bit more so they have more troops earlier
-Fixed some building errors relating to melting-pot decisions

Version 1.12
-Added compatibility with new CK2Plus version
-Added French localization thanks to Brune24
-Scattered some noble females throughout the Pagan lands so early-game rulers have marriage/alliance options
-Enabled Pagans as playable for Vanilla version

Version 1.11
-Added compatibility with new CK2Plus version
-Fixed some localisation errors
-Added Raiding economy buildings to Norse provinces
-Fixed some errors with Baltic Raiding buildings

Version 1.1 Vanilla
-Released vanilla compatible version of mod.

Version 1.1
-Made compatible with CK2Plus 1.33.20
-Reverted troop levels of holdings to CK2Plus levels to aid compatibility and increase early-game army sizes
-Added retinues and cultural buildings for Aztec and Outremer cultures
-Replaced "Warrior Cult" building with "Raiding" and "Steppe" economic chains for pagans that provide large amounts of troops but fairly low income
-Created separate building files for each culture, allowing the different AI building priorities for each culture
-AI will now build along historical guidelines for greater army variety between cultures
-Changing province culture (aside from melting pot events) will now destroy all buildings in that province

Version 1.03
-Made compatible with CK2 version 1.092
-Made compatible with CK2Plus version 1.33.18
-Reworked modules to fit new CK2Plus pattern (see below)

Version 1.02
-Lowered size of horde spawns 30-50% to compensate for smaller armies in general
-Fixed bug with Eastern African retinues
-Added No Assault, No Drift optional modules

Version 1.01
-Added tooltips to new buildings explaining what bonuses they provide and which chains they will lock out
-Fixed various minor bugs and localisation errors

Version 1.0
- Added unique tactics for each culture
- Added "good" and bad" version of each tactic, for a base total of 12 skirmish tactics, 3 charge tactics, and 12 melee tactics
- Weighted tactics by martial skill
- Removed generic retinues
- Added 3 unique retinues for each culture
- Reduced size of retinues to 300 from 500
- Increased gold cost of building retinues
- Rebalanced base levies from holdings
- Replaced all feudal buildings with building chains for Economy, Defense, and Army
- Tweaked unique cultural buildings to provide a larger percent of a nations army
- Added cultural buildings to cultures who lacked one
- Increased skirmish attack values for light cavalry and light infantry to make them more versatile

DOWNLOAD
CK2Plus: Kitchen Sink Edition 1.24 (Includes CK2Plus, Millennium Mod, CV's Fixes, and Better Armies) Alternate Download
Better Armies v1.24 Vanilla Alternate Download
PLEASE NOTE: The latest version of CK2Plus is built into CK2Plus: Kitchen Sink Edition, you do not need to download and enable it separately!

INSTALL:
1)Download Better Armies version of your choice (CK2Plus or Vanilla)
2)Delete any previous version of Better Armies
3)Unzip into your "Crusader Kings 2/mod" folder

TO PLAY:
1)Enable "[Required]CK2Plus KS" or "[Required] Better Armies Vanilla"
2) Enable any CK2Plus modules that you like
3)Enjoy!

KNOWN ISSUES: (Not all character/title history from 1000-1066 hasn been checked, there may be weirdness and errors)
-Playing as Venice between 1050-1065 crashes the game for unknown reasons
-Pisa is missing some Patrician families between 1060-1065
-Amalfi Republic is temporarily not a trade republic from 1039-1050, not sure if this is historically correct or not
-Anacona Trade Republic ain't quite right

UNFINISHED PLANNED FEATURES
-Localization for languages other than English/French
-Overhaul of combat trait system

CREDITS
Wiz - CK2Plus
Althacor - Millennium Mod
Caesarvincens - CV's Fixes
Six Gun South - Better Armies

If you have any questions or problems please feel free to post or send me a PM and I will do my best to help. Thanks for your interest!

See the second post for a comprehensive explanation of changes.

 

[Six Gun South]

Explanation of changes and new systems:

Combat Problems

Spoiler

There were a number of problems with the current combat system:

1) Unbalanced tactics
Certain tactics are far more powerful than others, especially tactics that provide bonuses to heavy infantry, horse archers, and heavy cavalry, and martial skill does not really tie into chances of rolling those tactics. Instead, tactic selection is made primarily based on army composition conditions or by character traits, which is a problem because tactics are zero sum. So any time you can avoid meeting the conditions necessary to enact Tactic X then the chances of getting Tactic Y & Z go up accordingly. This means that its almost always best to simply stack one unit type, for example heavy infantry, so that your chance of getting a heavy infantry tactic are near 100%, so you're doing full damage with the majority of your stack the entire battle. Exacerbating this is the fact that having over X% of your army composed of a certain unit type INCREASES your chance of rolling that tactic.

The "Charge" tactics that transition from skirmish to melee phases are also extremely powerful and can be gamed to get a higher chance of rolling a charge tactic by selecting generals with "bad traits". For instance, RECKLESS CHARGE:

knights_defensive = -0.5
horse_archers_defensive = -0.5
heavy_infantry_defensive = -0.3

knights_offensive = 2.4
horse_archers_offensive = 2.4
heavy_infantry_offensive = 1.2

or CHARGING OWN SKIRMISHERS:

knights_offensive = 6
light_cavalry_offensive = 3.6

archers_offensive = -4.2
archers_defensive = -0.5
horse_archers_offensive = -1.2
horse_archers_defensive = -0.3

Anyway, the reason the CHARGE tactics are so effective (even with the defense penalties) is because the guy receiving the charge is still stuck in the skirmish phase, where they cannot do much damage in return. So, the issue here is that you have two charge tactics that become available if your commander has a personality trait, but all the other charge tactics are still options as well, so you can end up with a crappy commander who has a much higher overall chance of initiating a decisive charge than a more competent commander would.

For instance:

Here we have Mr. Mayor, who's only qualifying attribute for leading the center column is possessing the Wroth trait. As you can see his martial skills is fairly poor, and he doesn't have any other bonus skills. Mr. Mayor has a very respectable 61.3% chance of starting a charge.

Here is his opponent, the King of Norway, who has respectable martial ability. His total chance at initiating a charge is only 45.5%. So even though he has a 7 point martial skill advantage over the Mayor, his chance of initiating the charge that will likely win his flank is considerably lower.


2) Tactic Length
Another issue is "tactic length". All skirmish tactics last 18 days (except SHIELDWALL which lasts 12 days for some reason and is way more powerful than any other skirmish tactic), while CHARGE skills last only 6 days. This means that whoever gets the charge in can be done with the CHARGE tactic and onto some other lethal melee tactic before his opponent has even transitioned from Skirmish to Melee phase.


3) Useless tactics

From looking through the combat_tactic file I've noticed there are 5 tactics that have no modifiers whatsoever. Why do they exist?


4) Incomplete cultural tactics

There are 8 cultural tactics available, which are a great idea, however there are something are several dozens cultures that do not have a cultural tactic of their own.

Better Armies Combat Solutions

Spoiler

What I've done is make the zero sum nature of the combat tactics work for me.

As long as you have a bare minimum (like 1% of your army) of the necessary unit type for a tactic, it is available. Your chances of rolling each type of tactic is equal, however your chances of rolling the better or worse version of a tactic is determined by your Martial skill.

For example lets look at this comparision of a 20 martial general vs. an 8 martial general:

As you can see, the 20 martial general on average has a 60% chance of rolling a devastating attack of some kind, a 25% of rolling an average attack, and a 15% chance of rolling a failed attack.

On the other hand the 8 martial general has only a 25% chance of rolling a devastating attack, a 35% chance of rolling an average attack, and a 40% chance of rolling a failed attack.

This means that a skilled general can overcome a numerical deficit to win against a less skilled opposing general.

Each culture also now has a unique tactic that is geared towards their particular specialty & unit rosters.

Retinue Problems

Spoiler

There were several glaring problems with how retinues operated that needed addressing:

1) Lack of interesting retinue options
Four generic retinue options + few unique retinue options were not enough. The cultural retinues were also more expensive than the generic ones, and oftentimes not worth building. Some cultures did not even have their own retinue or only had access to an overly broad retinue (ex. Camel Riders for ALL Muslims). In the end, most people chose simply to build as many heavy cavalry retinues as possible.

2) Poor AI retinue selection
I did a lot of testing regarding the AI decision-making process when it came to which retinue it chooses and I found some interesting results. First I found that, much like American voters, the AI would disproportionately choose whichever option appeared first in the list. Since the Archer retinue was the first in the file the AI would overwhelmingly build these, leading to hordes of archer retinues. Aside from that, the AI also seems to prefer to build heavy cavalry retinues if possible.

3) Retinue balance
Lastly retinues were too large, too powerful, and too cheap to the point where they were almost a complete substitute for levies.

Better Armies Retinue Solutions

Spoiler

I removed all the generic retinues and instead created three unique retinues for each culture which are listed from most, to least expensive. From my testing the AI seems to do a much better job of choosing a balanced retinue force. The player also has a more interesting selection of retinues to choose from that are more historically accurate for their nation.

The size of retinues have also been reduced from 500 to 300 men, and the price has been increased. This, plus reductions in overall army sizes means retinues are more smaller and not as widespread as before.

The bonuses for retinues have also been slightly reduced.

Building & Army Composition Problems

Spoiler

One problem I've always had with buildings in Crusader Kings 2 is that over the course of the game you'll usually end up building them all. So you end up with the same buildings as all the provinces around you, which has the effect of making all armies very similar to each other.

The big problem however, is army composition. Almost every army ends up looking almost exactly the same! On top of that, armies get ludicrously large by late game. England fielding 25,000 troops plus 20,000 retinues by 1300 just aint right.

Better Armies Building Solutions

Spoiler

My solution to providing more choice for the player and diversifying armies was to create mutually-exclusive building chains. Through lots of coding experimentation I finally managed to create a working system.

As you can see above building now fall into 5 categories:
1) Keep - This is your essential castle building, and from Level 1 onwards must be upgraded to reach the next level of buildings. For example, you need a Level 2 Keep to build the other Level 2 buildings.
2) Fortifications - Addons to your castle that are in two flavors: Mobility and Defense. Defense adds higher fort level, bigger garrison bonus, and archers. Mobility gives less defense and garrison troops but gives a hefty amount of light cavalry and heavy infantry. Building down one chain will lock out the other (as seen above).
3) Army - The main troop producing building chain. Two chains: Barracks, and Militia Yard. The Militia Yard comes with a large amount of light infantry, some heavy infantry, and a high levy reinforcement rate. The Barracks give more heavy infantry, less light infantry, and a lower levy reinforcement rate. Choosing one chain will lock out the other.
4) Economy - The economy has four different chains: Towns, Peasant Farmland, Feudal Estates, and Trade. Towns have the highest income and provide pikemen. Peasant Farmland has medium income and provides a large amount of light infantry and archers. Feudal Estates has the lowest income and provides heavy cavalry, and a troop morale bonus. And Trade has medium income and provides light cavalry and a technology rate increase. Choosing one chain locks out the others.
5) Cultural - Each culture has a unique cultural building that only they can build. This gives them troops and bonuses designed for their culture.

The final result is that the income, army composition, and army sizes can vary greatly depending on which buildings you select. Do you go for high income above anything else? A giant horde of light infantry? A small elite force? You decide.

Here are some examples of how different armies can end up using Better Armies:

 

[riknap]

awesome!
I've been working on a tactic overhaul myself, but since I'm starting from scratch I've been slow on progress.
oh, on that note, you might want to work in parallel with jecjackal, who's also starting the Combat Redux mod that does something similar.

a small note however that the AI doesn't really have an idea of specialization, so unless you make building weights tiered (e.g. once the ai invests in a specific building, the next in the chain has a higher building factor), you'll end up with the same late-game problem of homogenous vassal levies.
since you haven't uploaded a file though, how did you make one building chain lock out the presence of another? I've been having trouble with getting it to work on the trigger scope
edit: looks like I missed the link.
edit2: "not_if_x_exists" huh. First time I've read that scope. Is that a valid clausewitz command, or is it based on wiz's code?

 

[takedown47]

Cool! If I might make a suggestion, I had an idea for levies. In addition to the buildings rulers could get a character modifier adjusting levy size based on their stats and traits. So that way army sizes are even less of a carbon copy. That way the total raisable levy is different from one ruler to the next. If France can muster 6000 men in 1066, when the old King dies their army might be a large as 12000 or low as 3000. Martial and stewardship modify personal levies while Diplomacy and Intrigue modify vassal levy size. Traits like craven might reduce levy size while being brave might increase it because more people respect that.

 

[Neoptolemos]

I have to say, this mini-mod does more to make battles feel like an ebb and flow than anything else I've played here. It's especially cool to see a high-martial general take on a larger but poorly led force, with the tide going this way and then that as the superior tactics begin to tell. I haven't gotten far enough to see how the buildings factor in, and I have my misgivings there, but so far it looks like a good step in the right direction.

 

[riknap]

Cool! If I might make a suggestion, I had an idea for levies. In addition to the buildings rulers could get a character modifier adjusting levy size based on their stats and traits. So that way army sizes are even less of a carbon copy. That way the total raisable levy is different from one ruler to the next. If France can muster 6000 men in 1066, when the old King dies their army might be a large as 12000 or low as 3000. Martial and stewardship modify personal levies while Diplomacy and Intrigue modify vassal levy size. Traits like craven might reduce levy size while being brave might increase it because more people respect that.

not sure traits could affect levy size (I've been experimenting with them in my mod but I haven't seen an actual effect), but the attributes could (either directly via the static_modifiers or indirectly via triggered_modifiers).

 

[takedown47]

I was thinking as a character modifier like the vassal levies modifier in CK2Plus mod. In Wiz's mod levy size is determined by the number of holdings you have, so just copy that but link it to something variable like stats, traits or maybe even events if you are feeling brave.

 

[unmerged(17228)]

Will this work with the Project Synergy mod?

 

[Six Gun South]

Cool! If I might make a suggestion, I had an idea for levies. In addition to the buildings rulers could get a character modifier adjusting levy size based on their stats and traits. So that way army sizes are even less of a carbon copy. That way the total raisable levy is different from one ruler to the next. If France can muster 6000 men in 1066, when the old King dies their army might be a large as 12000 or low as 3000. Martial and stewardship modify personal levies while Diplomacy and Intrigue modify vassal levy size. Traits like craven might reduce levy size while being brave might increase it because more people respect that.

Well vassal levies are already highly determined in CK2+ by how much your vassals like you. Its pretty obvious when you've got a crummy king since your vassal levies dry up. That being said, I did have some ideas when it came to command traits, specifically some sort of "General Veterancy". For instance 'Green General', 'Experienced General', 'Veteran General' ect. So as you command more battles your Command trait goes up, giving you larger bonuses to morale and perhaps levy size as well.

This could encourage players to use their leader/heir in battle to get them some experience rather than just always using whoever has the highest martial skill.

 

[jecjackal]

Wow i had just started working on a combat overhaul mod myself. If your's works out i'll probably scrap mine (I couldn't find any combat mods anywhere before I started).

I am going to try a game of CK2 probably when the old kings comes out. I'll try your mod with CK2+ then

 

[takedown47]

Well vassal levies are already highly determined in CK2+ by how much your vassals like you. Its pretty obvious when you've got a crummy king since your vassal levies dry up. That being said, I did have some ideas when it came to command traits, specifically some sort of "General Veterancy". For instance 'Green General', 'Experienced General', 'Veteran General' ect. So as you command more battles your Command trait goes up, giving you larger bonuses to morale and perhaps levy size as well.

This could encourage players to use their leader/heir in battle to get them some experience rather than just always using whoever has the highest martial skill.

That would work better, how can I help? So is the mod compatible with CK2Plus?

 

[Six Gun South]

Will this work with the Project Synergy mod?

That would work better, how can I help? So is the mod compatible with CK2Plus?

At this point the mod is only compatible with CK2Plus. I'm working on a vanilla compatible version, but not everything works properly yet so its needs a bit more work before its ready.

I haven't worked a whole lot with traits but I imagine the primary components are:
1) Stats of the trait itself (Fairly easy)
2) Trait graphic (More difficult)
3) Tying the trait into the game via events (Probably difficult)

I'm going to have to poke around in there a bit and see what it takes to add progressing traits, similar to how you get "age" traits in CK2+ like "Toddler", "Young" and "Old".

 

[Six Gun South]

awesome!
I've been working on a tactic overhaul myself, but since I'm starting from scratch I've been slow on progress.
oh, on that note, you might want to work in parallel with jecjackal, who's also starting the Combat Redux mod that does something similar.

a small note however that the AI doesn't really have an idea of specialization, so unless you make building weights tiered (e.g. once the ai invests in a specific building, the next in the chain has a higher building factor), you'll end up with the same late-game problem of homogenous vassal levies.
since you haven't uploaded a file though, how did you make one building chain lock out the presence of another? I've been having trouble with getting it to work on the trigger scope
edit: looks like I missed the link.
edit2: "not_if_x_exists" huh. First time I've read that scope. Is that a valid clausewitz command, or is it based on wiz's code?

I actually found not_if_x_exists in a different paradox forum, maybe Vicky2, I can't remember. At first I had weighted buildings, but like you say, the AI will eventually build them all. I tested probably half a dozen designs and this was the most successful in terms of balancing player choice and making armies unique.

 

[Damocles]

The only thing really keeping it from being compatible with project synergy is the cultures. And even that might work out, as many cultures in project synergy are really sub-cultures. (i.e, everything for Italian buildings/retinues could be copy-pasted for lombardo, sardo, toscana, etc).

 

[Six Gun South]

The only thing really keeping it from being compatible with project synergy is the cultures. And even that might work out, as many cultures in project synergy are really sub-cultures. (i.e, everything for Italian buildings/retinues could be copy-pasted for lombardo, sardo, toscana, etc).

I just took a look at project synergy and one problem will be the different maps. I had to manually paste the start dates for the Keep buildings into the province files as they rely on the Castle Infrastructure technology to appear and in CK2+ technology doesn't keep up with the later start dates properly. Building start dates are also mainly tied to de jure kingdoms so if those are different it will affect what shows up where.

 

[riknap]

I haven't worked a whole lot with traits but I imagine the primary components are:
1) Stats of the trait itself (Fairly easy)
2) Trait graphic (More difficult)
3) Tying the trait into the game via events (Probably difficult)

I'm going to have to poke around in there a bit and see what it takes to add progressing traits, similar to how you get "age" traits in CK2+ like "Toddler", "Young" and "Old".

Making traits tied to events is relatively easy, as long as you don't have plans to make traits inheritable.
For example, you could base your "levelling up" of your veterancy-type traits on the way you can upgrade your Martial Education via combat. Of course, having more tiers is always better.
Note that adding traits causes incompatibilities, ie. trait indexing will be screwed, so you might want to have everything ready and polished before you release it.

As for trait graphics, you could always resort to recolouring existing vanilla trait graphics as a placeholder. At least that's what I did :laugh: (changing gfx doesn't cause incompatibilities anyway).

Incidentally, how did you make your files overwrite CK2+'s files(for example, the defines.lua, combat_tactics.txt)?
I was planning to make the trait overhaul project I'm working on eventually compatible with yours, since you've implemented most of everything that could make combat more nuanced (ignoring levy and mercenary balance which is a different issue) and my worked is partially biased towards specific compositions ratios.

 

[Six Gun South]

Making traits tied to events is relatively easy, as long as you don't have plans to make traits inheritable.
For example, you could base your "levelling up" of your veterancy-type traits on the way you can upgrade your Martial Education via combat. Of course, having more tiers is always better.
Note that adding traits causes incompatibilities, ie. trait indexing will be screwed, so you might want to have everything ready and polished before you release it.

As for trait graphics, you could always resort to recolouring existing vanilla trait graphics as a placeholder. At least that's what I did :laugh: (changing gfx doesn't cause incompatibilities anyway).

Incidentally, how did you make your files overwrite CK2+'s files(for example, the defines.lua, combat_tactics.txt)?
I was planning to make the trait overhaul project I'm working on eventually compatible with yours, since you've implemented most of everything that could make combat more nuanced (ignoring levy and mercenary balance which is a different issue) and my worked is partially biased towards specific compositions ratios.

You just structure your mod the same way as the folders you want them to overwrite. So common/defines.lua in your mod will overwrite the common/defines.lua of CK2+ or whichever mod goes with it.

CK2 loads mods from top to bottom so as long as your mod comes alphabetically before [Required]CK2+ it'll load over any CK2+ files.

 

[Hibernian]

The big problem however, is army composition. Almost every army ends up looking almost exactly the same! On top of that, armies get ludicrously large by late game. England fielding 25,000 troops plus 20,000 retinues by 1300 just aint right.

Well... I don't quite agree with that. Most medieval societies could raise somewhere between 0.5% and 2% of their population for armed service (though only for limited times). So let's say England can raise 1%, the population of England at that time was about 4 million people, so 1% of that is 40,000 men. So 45,000 troops is a perfectly reasonable possible army for a country like that.

Likewise for most of the middle ages the Byzantine army could raise about 100,000 to 150,000 troops (it's population fluctuated widely but was around the 10 to 12 million mark for most of the period, give or take). I hope you're mod won't make is so that the Empire can have only like 50,000 troops. I mean I know very few battles were fought with more then about 20,000 men, but that doesn't mean that is the total available manpower in the kingdom, and they wouldn't put all their forces in one big army, but keep some as reserves watching other borders in case any other enemies try to use the opportunity.

Also, you know that certain societies could raise much larger army sizes then their populations would seem to allow. All of the Steppe Nomad societies had massive armies, because pretty much every able-bodied man was expected to have weapons and a horse, which meant they could raise 20% to 25% of their population in times of war. So the Mongols had something like 200,000 horsemen, out of a population of only about 1 million (spread out all over the vast Mongol steppe), and that's what made them (and all nomad cultures) dangerous to settled peoples who had a very different system of warfare. (BTW, that's not counting the other 300,000 or so horsemen of the allied nomad tribes under them). Hence allowing them to conquer China, a country with over 100 million inhabitants and a million man army.

The Cumans at the game start, should be able to raise something like, say... 100,000 horsemen (depending upon their exact population size, but I think that's a fair estimate).

 

[takedown47]

What paradox games really need are supply carts. Otherwise 100k doomstacks can just march all over the world indefinitely. The Ageod games did good job at modelling supply in all their games. It is just a shame their Age2 engine is laggy and turn based, other than that they make good wargames.

 

[Six Gun South]

Well... I don't quite agree with that. Most medieval societies could raise somewhere between 0.5% and 2% of their population for armed service (though only for limited times). So let's say England can raise 1%, the population of England at that time was about 4 million people, so 1% of that is 40,000 men. So 45,000 troops is a perfectly reasonable possible army for a country like that.

Likewise for most of the middle ages the Byzantine army could raise about 100,000 to 150,000 troops (it's population fluctuated widely but was around the 10 to 12 million mark for most of the period, give or take). I hope you're mod won't make is so that the Empire can have only like 50,000 troops. I mean I know very few battles were fought with more then about 20,000 men, but that doesn't mean that is the total available manpower in the kingdom, and they wouldn't put all their forces in one big army, but keep some as reserves watching other borders in case any other enemies try to use the opportunity.

Also, you know that certain societies could raise much larger army sizes then their populations would seem to allow. All of the Steppe Nomad societies had massive armies, because pretty much every able-bodied man was expected to have weapons and a horse, which meant they could raise 20% to 25% of their population in times of war. So the Mongols had something like 200,000 horsemen, out of a population of only about 1 million (spread out all over the vast Mongol steppe), and that's what made them (and all nomad cultures) dangerous to settled peoples who had a very different system of warfare. (BTW, that's not counting the other 300,000 or so horsemen of the allied nomad tribes under them). Hence allowing them to conquer China, a country with over 100 million inhabitants and a million man army.

The Cumans at the game start, should be able to raise something like, say... 100,000 horsemen (depending upon their exact population size, but I think that's a fair estimate).

I have to disagree with some of your numbers. The English invasion during the 100 Year War usually did usually exceed 15k-20k men. And the Byzantines at the height of their power at the beginning of the game could only field something like 50k men in an emergency.

The problem is the game does not know how to model any of the things you describe. The game cannot model drafting your peasants into makeshift armies because aside from paying some upkeep, there is no economic cost to raising your armies. In real life rounding up all your civilians and arming them would leave no one to harvest the crops. There is also no "manpower" mechanic that would keep the AI/player from abusing that amount of troops. If you could raise 100,000 troops, and even if you got them all killed, within 18 months you'd have a whole new crop of 100,000 men again.

What CK2 can model is your men-at-arms (levies) who sit in your castle until needed, and your standing army (retinues). So when you think of armies in CK2 you need to think of the men that a feudal lord has trained and armed who can be called up at any time. I decided that somewhere between 800-1200 troops per holding was a balanced amount. The smaller armies also allow for more diverse armies because certain units like Knights and Horse Archers, when fielded in large numbers become incredibly overpowered.