Army question

[pennywit]

Read through the UCAM rules on mass combat a couple times. But I can't seem to find anything about the initial BP cost and time involved in raising an army (as opposed to ongoing consumption and BP costs for equipment). Did I miss this information somewhere? And how long does it take to recruit an army?

[Chemlak]

There are no answers to these questions, which is why your previous thread asking these questions didn't get any response.

Inferring from other parts of the rules, though:

1) In the kingdom turn that you recruit the army, you do not necessarily need to pay consumption for an army (since consumption is paid in the upkeep phase, which occurs before the edict phase), but for every week that an army is active in any given kingdom phase, they must be paid.

2) In the kingdom turn that you recruit the army, they may act immediately (see below). Mass Combat does not take place in monthly kingdom turns, but since movement for them is measured in hexes per day, it makes sense to deal with them on a daily basis.

Since the General is the leader of the military forces, it is not unreasonable to require that the General spend at least 1 day of his required 7 doing rulership duties before a newly recruited army can act. Previously recruited armies are assumed to be following orders already in the pipeline, so may act on any day, but must be paid in good time to avoid penalties to morale.

The "sensible" way to deal with it is to pay a full month's consumption for each army during the upkeep phase, including ones you are recruiting that turn.

[Yora]

I asked this before and this simply is not covered by the rules. During your monthly kingdom update, you simply pay the BP and the army pops up fully trained and equiped instantly.

As a GM, it makes sense to at least have the players place the order at the start of turn 1, and actually getting and paying for the troops at the beginning of turn 2.

I also think I will allow hiring mercenaries. Those can be recruited at any time and include free resources (mounts, weapons, armor) and tactics, but they cost three times the normal consumption for every month they are in service. Maybe half the consumption cost if they are hired after half of the month has already passed.

[pennywit]

I'm asking because I plan to run a Kingmaker campaign pretty soon, so I'm trying to decide how to approach things like the cost of raising armies. I looked through the rules three or four times, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss something.

Some things I'm thinking about:

1) As a general rule, I would assume that a kingdom has a certain number of standard "behind the scenes" guards or what have you who take care of the day-to-day stuff helping out the Marshal, the Warden, and so forth.

2) I think it should take at least a week to build an army from scratch, longer if the PCs want to train up anything more sophisticated than a troop of first-level warriors.

3) When building an army (as opposed to hiring mercenaries), I think there ought to be some sort of linkage between the kingdom's buildings/improvements and the troops available. I think you might, for example, have a hard time putting together an army of 100 paladins if you don't have a settlement with at least a few religious buildings and a good-sized population. Although I suspect some of this might come down to on-the-fly rulings.

[Spatula]

pennywit wrote:

Read through the UCAM rules on mass combat a couple times. But I can't seem to find anything about the initial BP cost and time involved in raising an army (as opposed to ongoing consumption and BP costs for equipment). Did I miss this information somewhere? And how long does it take to recruit an army?

Been wondering about this myself; thought I was going crazy that I couldn't find it. While it's not stated, the recruitment cost appears to be 0 unless the army has some resources. We can reverse engineer this from the few sample units that do have a listed recruitment cost (Elite Army Commandos, Elite Mounted Knights, Hobgoblin Army, and Orc Army) and subtracting the cost of their resources. The only one that doesn't add up is the Hobgoblin Army, which looks like the cost of having ranged weapons was not included.

Elite Army Commandos - costs 20 BP
Resources: Healing Potions, Improved Armor, Improved Weapons, Ranged Weapons
Resource Cost: 10 + 3 + 5 + 2 = 20

Elite Mounted Knights - costs 9 BP
Resources: Improved Armor, Improved Weapons, Mounts (horses)
Resource Cost: 3 + 5 + 1 = 9

Hobgoblin Army - costs 8 BP (probably should be 10 BP)
Resources: Improved Armor, Improved Weapons, Ranged Weapons
Resource Cost: 3 + 5 + 2 = 10?!

Orc Army - costs 3 BP
Resources: Improved Armor
Resource Cost: 3