How long should recovery of levies take?

[Chlodio]

I

Ok by max recruitment pool I me
An max number of citizens( wait should I use the term citizens because that term wasn't than, but than what possible shorthand can I use for people that consider themselves loyal to particular kingdom) who can be called upon to serve, not how many that would be called in to serve.

Of course no one is going to send their entire military force to fight a single battle, not even a single campaign, nor will they recruit( I am using term recruitment, but really it's catch all phrase I am using about dozen different methods for gathering military forces saying we all covering 60o years and hundreds of different cultures, governments, and rulers) all eligible citizens for military service. I consider that common sense, but apparently I was wrong. Using your logic the US should invaded Iraq with 10s of millions of troops.

As for why I didn't use book to back me up oh mister, I don't have a book on European levy system laying around and it was 1'o clock in morning.

And I used census from domesday book ( there was but slaves listed, and they where freed, but the Normans just made them serfs, such aren't a factor) was because it's was only accurate census taking of England in this era that has survive. If you got a book with accurate census numbers please share. And if I can't use the domesday book as a source, than why using a book about 1100ad to 1300ad about game with earliest start date is 867, a near 300 years before hand, in cultures that don't follow the western European model of who can fight.

Finally You forget when talking about that 26 percent that Included yeoman, or wealthy non-noble landowner who were expected to serve the levy. So let's remove that 21 percent from the tenant/craftsman being a mix bag.
We still got 5 percent. But let's go further and say that by 1300 they only represented 2.5 of the population ( unlikely to reduced that much, but let's go with it for arguments sake) that gives a use manpower number 75,000. This doesn't include the Noble and their Entourage of squires and man at arms, nor the tenants/craftsman. This o

But is all crazy as the Noble and their personal troops and landowning yeoman would be counted as man at arms. Where tenant farmers and craftsman would count as levy troops more than likely. But reason was someone regard that levy troops were only the weathly landowners.

Another person mentioned ten years replace just 400 lost man. Levy shouldn't take that long to replace as they where expected to fight in formation and only formation. It might take 6 years replace your forces if lost 50,000 man in battle. But to lose let's say 5,000 or 10,000 troops in 1300 ad isn't a huge crippling loss.

You should be able replace those rather quickly as far as levies are concerned as.
It professional soldier or semi professional soldiers on other hand....

I honestly don't know how to react to your reply, for it's unintelligible, lacks any substance, backing, and (much like your other reply) ends with assertion without defined reasoning.

 

[Denkt]

Don't "peasants" refer to about 90% of the population which is alot? The Roman Empire had an army of between 300 000 to 600 000 or so which would mean with a population of 60 miliion that about 1% was in the military so these preindustrial societies did not really field armies that required several % of their population since their economies could not support such armies, especially in distant land.

 

[Avernite]

I think a balance would be to have multiple 'grades' of levies. But not sure this would be a good game.

The first step is the traditional levy; men expected to serve in their nearby area to defend their realm, during 'off-season' in terms of farming. They can be kept on for longer, but costs start to creep up as time increases, and explode as distance increases (so a French King seeking to counter a Flemish rebellion would send the Duke of Valois or Count of Artois to crush it with their armies, not trot out the Aquitanians - unless he needed them and had the money).

The second step is a non-traditional levy, as in going over the areas previously recruited from again, and rounding up any unoccupied-looking male. This would cause local anger, and be quite costly (as, even if you can force their recruitment, you are losing tax revenue from obstructionism, and paying the occasional bribe to get more recruits).

The final step is what would be a general recruitment drive; typically only available to defend the barony in question and its direct neighbours from perceived arch-enemies (e.g. the city summoning all its citizens but also nearby farmers to man the walls in a siege, or to prevent it being sieged ). These would be extremely expensive to move anywhere, as you're taking farmers who are now leaving their flocks, families and fields entirely unattended (by adult men, at least, and probably most of the older boys).

In a normal war, a ruler would only summon the traditional levy, get them to beat on their neighbours, and surrender if they lose. This levy restores in a few years at most, since it's obligation and not manpower that limits it. If a further level levy falls, though, it waits for them to fill out.
In a crisis, say a civil war that means the death of the ruler in question if he loses, the second levy might be called on, and if it wins, nice, but if it loses it will be a decade or more to recover - since actual work is being left undone, some marginal fields are untended, and so on, so the locals will want any boys reaching manhood to be available for that rather than more silly wars.
In impending doom scenarios, the third level is called, but losses to it mean the economy of the area takes a real hit. Use them only if you need them to prevent worse devastation (e.g. Mongol or Viking raiders). They should also be completely unable to move very far without triggering the same local devastation (a substitute for meaning they're away too long, resulting in the lack of labour to do critical work like bringing in the harvest, and thus general famine and disaster for families). If this levy dies (rather than shatters from lacking morale), the area is devastated, and it can take a generation or two to recover.
Given location restrictions, this would usually only apply to a barony or two, even if a nation got utterly beaten, since there would be no point (or maybe gamewise restriction) after the first and second levy failed to stem the invasion. However, for the first and second battle against the invaders, the local 'third' levy might be called, if the enemy is scary enough (so not when the Count of Holland and Flanders are squabbling over Zeeland - Zeeland might still be devastated, but not for this reason).

 

[Chlodio]

@Avernite
It's my opinion that there should be only two levels. Ian Heath notes how he believes that the Danes only raised half the men for the offensive wars, but reserved full strength for defensive wars. There is certainly a logic there; if the home region is attacked while the king is leading a foreign expedition, the home region is far from defenseless, even if the best men are with the king. In CK2 you can technically do this, but the game discourages it because:

• vassal levies are not detached from their garrison
• you can't actually raise levies if you already have raised levies
• AI will bring all it troops to every war, so by not doing the same, you are giving it a handicap

Also, at least in Hungary, the duty abroad was more limited than domestic service, thus I reckon the second tier levy shouldn't even be able to depart from the kingdom.

 

[Wolfshield156]

I honestly don't know how to react to your reply, for it's unintelligible, lacks any substance, backing, and (much like your other reply) ends with assertion without defined reasoning.

And what is your point... You seem hung up on England Because I said 26% population was eligible to be levy, while making no reference to fact gave HRE and France much smaller eligible troops of 15 and 5 percent for for military levy.
England was know to have adnormal amount of people in middle class though.

And that 1.2% population is eligible for the levy is Bogus because Yeoman (rich farmers that had to own at least 100 acres of land ) would've alone made up 10 percent of the population as domesday census was written. This doesn't included poorer but still free people either.

This before talking about dozen other cultures with different system from the European one

Points are that from historical stand point
A) there eligible population for military levying that will be time to train them and not time create more of through breeding or laws changes will be stop gap for getting more.
B) levy troops are trained in group fighting and aren't up to level full professional soldiers in this either, such as their training quality and essentially being trained in batches mean it won't take them long to train
C) Higher quality troops such castle guards, lower nobility, semi professional or fully professional soldier would be the ones that take awhile to replace.


From gameplay point of view
A) Levy aren't core of your army anymore, but are instead the term they have decided to use for catch all phrase for militia, lower quality levies, and other type of low quality
Military troops. Such would be in gameplay terms cannon fodder. As single knight can kill literally kill 20 of them in a single battle.
B)Man at arms represented your high quality troops, and will be where your heavy infantry, archers, light Calvary, and other military assets come from.

Basically, levy are just going to fill role light infantry is supposed to fill in CK2, such it shouldn't matter if regrew quickly. But if you make so man at arms take long time to rebuild( along with the gold cost of recruiting them) than losing them will cause your situation will be bad if they get completely wiped out.

So from a gameplay and historical stand point levies should be quick to come back.

 

[Henry IX]

Feudal armies were small. Like really small. Very few armies in Europe prior to the 16th century exceeded 10000 men. As such most feudal kingdoms could afford to lose armies quite frequently and still be OK. The levies represent only a small proportion of the population and as such should recover quickly.

However, the chivalry of a nation is a much smaller pool and is very hard to rapidly replace and cannot quickly recover from a bad defeat. It is worth noting that the number of battles that decimated the chivalry of a kingdom can be counted on one hand - they were not standard occurrences. I would tend to favour a system that recovers levies at a fast level but which penalises you (reputation/income/relations with vassals) for both the duration and frequency of raising them, as this better represents the functioning of most agrarian pre-modern societies.

Some polities also used other methods for raising forces (Mameluke soldiers, ghazis, marches, etc.) Most of these can either be represented as mercenaries or retinue type units. I am particularly a fan of mercenary units that cost things other than (or as well as) money as these sorts of forces were common in many areas.

In non-feudal societies (particularly tribal/nomadic societies) a far greater proportion of the population was mobilisable, where every adult male was expected to fight. These societies had a far greater military capacity in relation to their population, but were rarely united enough to actually do this and could be crippled by a single defeat. Within the 1000 year period from 600 -1600 AD there are only two occasions where an entire tribal/nomad society were united under a single leader, the Mongols under Genghis Khan and the Arabs under Mohammed. I would suggest that this kind of singular event is better pre-scripted rather than arising out of mechanics. Nomadic societies have always been a bit problematic in CK as they do not function like the feudal societies the game was originally designed to simulate. If they are including them as playable (and I assume they will) then they will need to be carefully designed to give them the right balance of uniqueness, challenge and playability.