Heavy cavalry retinues outside Byzantium: historical?

[brxbrx]

From what I understand about Medieval military organization, knights, or heavy cavalry, wore the heaviest armor and rode powerful warhorses that were considered ruinously expensive. Even though knights were always the focus of every army, the cost of maintaining them was delegated to vassals, who armed themselves and a few nobles should they be called to war.
Byzantium, which evolved directly from the Roman Empire and did not experience the same decline as in the West, was able to maintain standing armies, due to more advanced social infrastructure.

So why do Bretons, Germans, and Frenchmen get to form standing retinues containing 400 knights? Could a single ruler even muster the smiths necessary to create the armor for so many knights, given the decentralized nature of domains back then?
I do not think that cavalry retinues outside of the ERE should contain heavy cavalry. Heavy cavalry should be levy-only.
Retinues have their place. Certainly, the king had men to guard his castle, that he didn't have to call from the fields. But heavy cavalry do not belong in retinues, not outside Byzantium.

 

[Beric Dondarion]

Because that's their cultural building troops?

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Doesn't it take awhile to develop the tech to do this? Buying retinue seems like a waste of income, anyway, if you've got less than 10 gold a month.

From what I've seen, some nations are limited as to what retinues they can buy. For example, the cavalry retinues for Egyptians are light cav and archers.

This really shouldn't be based on culture, I think. If the Muslims take over Constantinople ala the Ottomans, they should be able to have cataphract retinues.

 

[unmerged(494787)]

I've tried modding retinues. The only qualifiers that work appear to be "culture = xxx" and "culture_group = xxx". While some conquering cultures never really shed what would be considered their cultural retinue (ex. the Normans in England and Sicily), for balance reasons it's probably best that you only get one retinue.

For the Ottoman example, they never really adopted Heavy Cavalry in the Western European sense of the word, instead preferring to rely on what would be considered light cavalry and horse archers, with mongol-style tactics. The heaviest their armor appears to have gotten is something roughly equivalent to early Cataphract armor, and that was after adopted this game's time frame.

 

[Comrade Chaos]

I don't think they're armed on the spot. You just go about finding knights and putting them into your army.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Knights are extremely expensive outside Byzantium now anyway. Its 24 income a month for just 1000 men.

 

[Talq]

It requires a great deal of wishful thinking to think the Byzantine Empire had unique access to 'heavy cavalry' in this period, especially as heavy cavalry was what the normans & french (and by extension the crusaders) did well. (In fact, the near total absence of heavy cavalry in western europe is more problematic - even if justified by them being overpowered).

The 'retinue of the king' albeit far smaller than what the game would throw up would almost certainly be entirely heavy cavalry in most of the nations of europe (household knights). The sort of proto-standing armies we get instead would be more diverse, but would be well armed by definition, and most of the cavalry elements would fight as heavy cavalry.

 

[riknap]

Knights are extremely expensive outside Byzantium now anyway. Its 24 income a month for just 1000 men.

they only have a cost while reinforcing. After they have been armed and mustered, they are "free".
I try to imagine the "reinforcement cost" as the expenses in giving each ... soldier in the retinue a piece of land and stuff like arms and squires.

 

[brxbrx]

What I'm saying is that Byzantines and Westerners organized differently.
Byzantines had standing armies, Westerners had levies (and each had some of the other, but not heavy cavalry, the singularly most expensive military unit of the time).

Because that's their cultural building troops?

Yes, and they already get more heavy cavalry than anybody else, but it should only be as levies. No liege had 400 knights sitting around waiting for war.

Doesn't it take awhile to develop the tech to do this? Buying retinue seems like a waste of income, anyway, if you've got less than 10 gold a month.

From what I've seen, some nations are limited as to what retinues they can buy. For example, the cavalry retinues for Egyptians are light cav and archers.

This really shouldn't be based on culture, I think. If the Muslims take over Constantinople ala the Ottomans, they should be able to have cataphract retinues.

1. No, retinues are available pretty early on.
2. Well, every nation can get a cavalry retinue, which contains 100 heavy cavalry.

 

[liamgamer55]

they only have a cost while reinforcing. After they have been armed and mustered, they are "free".
I try to imagine the "reinforcement cost" as the expenses in giving each ... soldier in the retinue a piece of land and stuff like arms and squires.

And most kings historically couldn't budget (so couldn't come up with the heavy essentially upfront cost) so this seems realistic.

 

[kishurki]

Actually beeing a knight was something obvious even for landless nobles. With support of their family, their lords, they were equipped with armors and horses, they dueled with other nobles for tophies. It was popular to be a knight, not like a duke could only afford it. Average set of armor was worth a small village, and by village i dont mean anything with more than 40 inhabitants, really small thing.

 

[gornard]

The game uses the term retinue iirc which doesn't mean standing army really. What i'd imagine a heavy cavalry retinue would be is something more a long the lines of a group of men at arms. By that i mean perhaps lesser nobles, retainers or otherwise wealthy soldiers who operate on a semi professional basis. They would be equipped and fight like heavy cavalry.

The french gendarme are a later example, but earlier warlike feudal lords often kept a group of cavalry men around for the day to day thuggery of feudalism.

 

[liamgamer55]

The french gendarme are a later example, but earlier warlike feudal lords often kept a group of cavalry men around for the day to day thuggery of feudalism.

Do you think perhaps that retinue size should actually decrease over time and not increase?

 

[Hootieleece]

I don't think that the "Knights Retinue" as implemented in the game is that bad.People were whining that there were TOO FEW knights just a version or 2 back.128 gold start up cost and 4.8 gold/month while reinforcing is significant cost.Since it takes about 20 months to fully reinforce the first time. So 220 gold for 500 soldiers.More expensive per soldier than even Mercenaries.Yes they are Free if at full strength, but most of the time they are not.(if you actually use them in combat)

The problem with the Retinue system is the Military Capacity.The fact that each tech level(.1) is worth 1% of Military Capacity.That isn't too bad either......the problem is that when running an empire (HRE,500+ holdings) by 1200 Military capacity is through the roof.1,000,000 + soldiers.(Not sure how it is calculated) and the Retinue Capacity is usually about 250K.I was fielding 50K(All types) of retinues with large amount of Capacity to spare.Thus allowimg me to not even really need vassal levies anymore.(except if i was fighting Mongol doomstacks)


I think it is like Faction mechanic......It wasn't designed for large entity's and doesn't scale well.(In other games, it works fine. As long as you are 1 average size Kingdom (England,France,or smaller one)

 

[liamgamer55]

Perhaps retinue size should be made even more expensive but should be based purely on holdings and not the realm size? Either that or it's certainly possible to make Empire's have a massive malus to retinue size (say -50%), because after all... generally empire's are going to be extremely large (unlike kingdoms which are sometimes only 3 counties big).

 

[Talq]

If they want retinues to be retinues, as against proto- standing armies they could run it off demense (either troops or holdings), or sharply reduce the contribution of manpower outside of the demense (and partially link it to crown authority). This also addresses the problem of the HRE indirectly having access to obscene levels of manpower that it didn't have access to in real life.

In either case they have fallen into the trap of retinues scaling with three things (own tech, economy tech, wealth/time), so they increase rather more rapidly than they probably anticipated.

Not keen on the idea of making them expensive - they are arguably too expensive now. Remember, retinue tech reduces levy size, so in theory the retinue limit, and retinues themselves are meant to be used.

 

[N Katsyev]

I feel like they are proto-standing armies though and that's actually well done in the game as you rely less and less on levies as time progresses.

 

[Hootieleece]

The proto-standing army issue I'm fine with.It's just the fact that I can have 50,000 man standing army in 1200 AD.I think 5,000 is plausible if not completely "FUN".

In my current Game as (France)I have 10k retinue(using 16k of 22k retinue cap)in 1210AD.I think that retinue caps and Manpower calculations should be nerfed by at least 33%.

I mean my retinue is bigger that any Dukes entire levy.So Rebellions never happen unless I force them (using Imprison) and then they are a forgone conclusion.

 

[gornard]

Do you think perhaps that retinue size should actually decrease over time and not increase?

No, i'm just saying that something like a heavy cav retinue existed throughout the time frame

 

[Amadeu of Savoy]

The issue with retinues and levies looks more like a matter of balacing than poor implementation. Just play with the numbers until you get it right.