Some thoughts on war exhaustion, recruiting, and bad boys

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Martinov
Of course, an easy way out would be to make 1 factor of inf/cav equal to 500 soldiers not 1000! This would scale things more accurately!

One hundred, more likely. Raise soldiers in companies, not battalions!

Which would make the siege army numbers/evemts mentioned in the thread regarding the historical siege of Louisbourg in the 1492-1792 forum at least remotely possible.

 

[Steph]

Raising the maintenance cost is not sufficient. Having enough money to pay the soldiers, their uniform and their weapons is not the only thing necessary. You should have a part of your population NOT in the army (peasants, craftsmen, merchants, etc), to support your fighting force.
The only way to do this is to introduce a cap, linked to the population size (and a logistic tech?), and use the maintenance (perhaps raising it a bit). So:
- Country with low population, low income : small unprepared army (not 100% in maintenance)
- Country with low population, high income : small professionnal army (100% maintenance)
- Country with high population, low income : big army of unprepared conscripts (50% maintenance).
- Country with high population, high income : big professionnal army