So now you are saying gathering enough ships on your or the enemies side of the coast is not a problem?
What? Where do you read that I said that? Maybe you misunderstood:
- The English raised ships in England. In their own territory. This I have always agreed with as OK.
- The French raised ships from an ally, in their own territory and that of their ally. This has never been said to be a problem.
- The French did not raise ships in English territory, nor in any neutral territory; nowhere did I say that.
- The English did not raise ships in French territory, nor in any neutral territory; nowhere did I say that.
Raising ships in your own territory has never been an issue. No ships were raised in neutral or even enemy territory for this battle. Even though this was a complex case, because the French were allied to one side (the anti-King John barons in an English revolt), there was never any question of raising ships anywhere but each side's own lands and ports.
Please make up your mind if gathering ships at any one point is a problem or not a problem. It can not be shroedingers problem. We a still a few centuries to early for the uncertainty principle!
I explained in detail in the last post I made - did you read it? Raising ships in your own or ally territory is feasible; raising ships in neutral territory generally isn't. Seizing ships in conquered enemy territory can be done, but comes with some problems (it will usually be resisted and you may need to supply your own crews).
You think a army in the real world can not attack a "allied" city? You think one measily city would spark a war?
You think one small squabble like that is goingt to cause all out war?
Yes.
Suppose that Mexico attacked Del Rio, just over the border in Texas; do you imagine that the Americans would say "ah, no big deal, it's only one little city"? I'm pretty sure they would not - it would be the start of a war. A basic job of any lord is to protect his land and people; if you let them get attacked, pretty soon all of your rivals will be attacking your land to get a piece of the action. If someone attacks you, as a medieval lord, either they apologise very quickly and sincerely or you attack them back. Seriously, the medieval age was really not one where you could just go around looting and killing with impunity; if you played the bandit, powerful people would eventually nail you down.
Try reading the history of the Norman lords of Sicily; they are a nice example of a lord (a whole dynasty, in fact) getting away with
a lot, but not scot free. Eventually the Emperors caught up with them (after they had squandered their sea power, as it happens) and crushed them. They pulled a lot of imperial beards, but when they did so they got a war.
Apparently during hte "Trouble in the Camp" event the game has, your two Champions are at war with one another?
You need to break more then 1 egg, to make a war omlett.
Two champions brawling (or even duelling or brawling with their followers) is nothing like an army sacking a town or stealing ships. It's frankly ridiculous even to say so.
At worst you are a privateer. You really think anyone would call a nobleman "Pirate", just because he did some ship stealing?
People of the time could and did call noblemen pirates. Not usually to their faces, I'll grant you, but check out Duke Barnim of Pomerania, Hayreddin Barbarossa and Eustace the Monk, all of whom held lordships and were known as pirates. (The last one was the ex-monk who was the ally of the French at Sandwich, in fact, after he had been given lordship of the Channel Islands by King John of England).
Because by that definition in the battle of Sandwich, the English were Pirates (cause they siezed french ships).
No, because they seized the ships in a war. I know it might seem odd, but different rules apply to lords at war than those (supposedly) at peace. If you are at war, there is a lot that you are allowed - expected, even - to do that would be grave crimes if you did them while supposedly at peace. Killing people, for example, is normal in war but is murder if done while at peace.
Again, you are turning one little pillaged city in a World War.
Not into a "World War", no - just into a war. Because it is an act of war by just about anybody's definition.
1. Viking is just the Norse word for "Raider"
I know*. What point are you trying to make?
*: actually, there is a proposed alternative root for the word tied to the place the first raiders came from to Lindisfarne, but the "wicingas"/"vikingr" word as a root seems the more plausible option, to me.
2. Longships were used extensively by Norse traders as well
Longships were dual oar/sail vessels that had a crew of 20+. Those are the "raiding vessels" we are talking about; they had much lower cargo capacity and much higher crew numbers than cogs, hulks or the like. When they went to war, their crews were the soldiers, they didn't have a crew plus some soldiers as "cargo". That was the way the norse folks did raiding and war, and it was very effective.
3. You can pay them for it. "We get gold and have no danger from fighting? Cool!"
You can pay who for what? I don't understand what you are trying to say, here. What could you pay the vikings to do?
So now we are the options:
- Steal, build or hire Local Transport Ships
Build or hire in your own or allied territory, yes. You can't really "steal" (as in "sneak off with") enough ships to carry an army, but you could seize them in war. You might seize them at sea (by boarding - which would need you to have ships already, of course) or, if you are lucky, you might catch some in a port that you take by siege or assault. In either of thes two cases you would probably need your own seamen to crew the ships you have taken.
- Pay Norsemen to give you a ride
Norsemen can't "give you a ride", because their ships are full of crew; landlubbers aboard would be useless weight and a waste of space. Merchants might give you passage, but you would need friendly relations with them to agree to this; how do they know that you are not pirates who will seize their ship from them as soon as you are away from port?
- Send for your own fleet to pick you up
You can certainly try this, but it's fraught with problems. Firstly, how are you going to get a message to them without a ship? Secondly, assuming that you find a ship that will take a messenger, how do they know where to pick you up? You will have problems provisioning your army if you don't keep moving, so you are unlikely to be in the same place you sent the message from. The only place you might be able to stay still for a while is in friendly, allied lands - in which case you might be able to just hire friendly ships to take you home anyhow.
Seriously, this is how raiders were caught and captured by lords like Charlemagne and Alfred. Raiders live by their mobility and speed. Even the "Great Heathen Army" of the "Sons of Lodbrok" was eventually bogged down and destroyed in this way. (They sailed up the Thames and camped at Hertford; Alfred built a fortified bridge behind them, and sent ships there in support, to trap the norse ships in the river. He then withdrew his people, with as much food as they could carry from the land, into the burhs (fortified towns) he had built. The desperate norse army marched to Chester on the opposite side of England to try to escape, but they were trapped there, too, exhausted, starving and unable to take the towns and ports of the North-West).
All three things seem perfectly represented by "spend 1 Gold per 100 men + 1 Month of disembarking time".
Given how wrong the points above this were, it no longer really makes any sense. Most of the real remedies don' look anything like "spend 1 Gold per 100 men + 1 Month of (dis)embarking time". Returning to ships left on the beach is way quicker than "1 month embarking time", but trying to thumb a lift from passing norsemen or trying to link up with an incoming fleet using medieval communications technology are highly unlikely to work no matter how much gold you have, even in several months. The closest to "spend gold plus time" is when you are in friendly territory. Spending gold proportional to your army size here is roughly right, but the time ought really be exponential with army size and reduced by port size. Ships for an army of 100 could be available in just a couple of days or even less, but ships for 1000 will take much longer than 10 times that unless in a very big port.