Should recruits have shields?

[LyonExodus]

So you still need numerical superiority, and that's fine. But recruits are such a liability against anything beyond a looter they really aren't good for bolstering your ranks.

unless we are talking about killing cavalry units.
The recruits perform better than T2 at doing that. My guess is because of weapons like the Pitchfork and the Scythe or other 2H weapons that T2 units don't get.

Still, kinda silly how in that scenario recruits are better, it shows how much the weapons in this game are important

 

[Bluko88]

There are like six perks that, when taken together, make leveling them a snap for the player so people making use of them would never have an issue leveling recruits. A lot of the time, they don't even need to get into fights really, since there is a +200 bonus XP perk in there somewhere.

At that point, the only concern is the AI having them and not being able to delete the trash mobs for basically zero effort.

My issue is not leveling them, at least not late game so much. I'm well aware with the right perks in Leadership you can breeze through the lower tiers or bypass them entirely.

It's that as a unit, in-game, they are ostensibly bad. Not because they are "low level" but in terms of equipment as an intermediary between a peasant and trained soldier.


Let's review; there are peasants in-game as a tier 0 troop, they have a wage of 1 gold a day, and a 20-30 Skill in all categories. They are equipped with scythes, pitchforks, hammers, rocks. Stuff you expect peasants to carry.

If I get a peasant in my party what is the sense in upgrading them to a recruit? Recruits cost more at 2 gold a day (not a big deal, but they do cost more), their skills are lower, and their equipment roster is arguably worse. How is that an "upgrade"? Yes it's a necessary step to make them an actual combat troop, but it's a bad chain of progression.

I get it; we don't start with tier 0 in the recruitment pool. If we did then there would be a real problem of lots unarmed, unarmored units running around clogging up armies. Or maybe not if you like cannon fodder. But for those that really dig the element of progression that could be a thing, I'm sure there's a mod for it. But like I've said, the Recruit is then a bad upgrade.


Recruits are volunteers. They are not conscripts, they are not levies forcibly dragged off the farm. They are *in theory* young men who are willing and eager go to war for money and glory. (Why you also can't get Recruits when too many other warbands move through village and or Fief Loyalty drops to 0.) Which means they'd equip themselves as best they could with more proper weapons, and less farm implements. Even if a Feudal Lord was a total cheapskate I have to imagine proper spears would be handed out or made for them. Ideally you'd want to give them a shield too. Even the cruelest, cheapest, pettiest warlord would have to pause looking at a bunch of dudes armed with a hand sickle or wooden hammer.

We have to assume that when you recruit a unit, they've been equipped, they are not waiting to be equipped - they just lack experience and have a lower pay grade.

 

[JunKeteer]

And that's fine if your new and coming to grips with the game, yes you should fight looters til you learn what to do. All I'm trying to do is take the bumper rails off a bit for veteran players.

I see it more as giving them all shields (or a percentage) is adding bumper rails for veteran players since most that are experienced can skip this 'recruit/looter' cycle within 2 battles.
Now if you want to make it a better experience for completely new players that might struggle getting recruits, wiping out, and restarting multiple times to even get past that phase, sure. But you might as well add training fields back in too. Recruits as they are serve their purpose as basic/cheap fodder. You recruit spam a bunch (numbers advantage) and maybe only 5 make it to trained infantry/archer - but once you even get a few of those, the rest of the recruits you hire from then on don't have that 'struggle'. The issue with late-game AI and their party composition is a different thing and shouldn't be 'balanced' by giving the recruits shields in order to make those AI/parties more challenging.

IF you want to make recruits more like volunteers and with shields/weapons, make them more expensive too then, make recruiting them/recruit pool more infrequent, make it so you have to at least be the next clan tier to essentially 'steal' a kingdom's military units.

 

[Bluko88]

I think if there is a real issue here, then it's this or not giving rocks to recruits. If they had rocks then they'd have a way to generate some XP without getting slaughtered in a melee every time against equivalent units (e.g. looters). I don't think they should be rebalanced to be better against higher tier units at all, and every T2 infantry unit has a shield which would nullify the boost recruits would get from rocks.

Sad thing is what I said about rocks in OP was mostly in jest.

I've never had a problem rocks TBH. When I get killed by rocks it's usually cause I'm trying to solo far too many Looters and I've kiting around them far too long on horse.

Not to say I haven't been "stoned to death", but the range of stones is so short I have to question what people are doing to find them bothersome. If I get KO'd by Looters it's one of the 3 things:

1. Pitchfork stopping horse, and I get gank bonked
2. Absolutely perfectly timed Falchion swing that hits my leg on horseback at full speed
3. I get surrounded on foot with Low Athletics


I question anyone's experience that thinks rocks are good edition to recruits. I mean they'll help a little, but they won't get much of an opportunity to throw them. I suppose in larger melee encounters from the rear they might, but a rock doesn't do squat to a Legionary or Banner Knight when compared with a Scythe.

Actually I'm pretty sure I did give recruits rocks. Throwing weapons just end up making infantry more vulnerable to cavalry in my experience, because they stand holding said throwing weapon and then just take a lance to the face. Yep no discernible difference (base game recruits are fine against looters anyways):


Also Peasants probably have too many scythes (though I think it varies by Culture)

Regarding the training thing, Warband had the training grounds scattered across the map where you could practice melee, ranged, and cavalry play and earn XP for relevant troop types by doing so. The melee practice put you against one to four of your own troops in a brawl, and beating them all would provide a decent amount of XP. I'd say a workable way to reintroduce this kind of feature would be to add at least one training ground to each faction's territory, add a stamina limit for training like we have for smithing so you can't speedrun a hundred recruits into vlandian sergeants, wound half or more of the units that get knocked out, and pass time on the world map after each bout (this time doesn't count for recovering training stamina or wounded troops). The amount of XP earned should be such that acing your entire pool of recruits in maximum-size sessions should allow between a quarter and half of them to rank up, which is of course assuming you don't get beaten at any point.

A key factor in this is keeping it like Warband where you and all of the units were forced to wear plain clothes and use blunt practice weapons, and where fighting more troops at once yielded greater total XP for them. If you can 1v4 with identical equipment, you can be the "safe" meatgrinder that you put your recruits through. This is a way to reward the player for competency.

Or in Arenas...

Like I said this mod goes about it a pretty good way since you have to pay to use arena for training, can't use during night:

TrainYourTroops Updated

This mod adds an option to train your troops in the arena menu of all towns.This will cost you some gold, and some of your troops will be wounded during training.

www.nexusmods.com

It is odd how there's literally only one training field in Bannerlord, though it's basically just tutorial zone as is.

 

[five bucks]

The only counter to archers are mass shielded high tier troops.

Indeed, and even that doesn't really counter them properly. Why? Because they can shred shield infantry too when their shields are down in combat. Why? Because arrows do too much damage to armour.

Since the AI rarely masses those troops in significant numbers they have a difficult time with mass archers. Adding a little bit more armor to all troops isn't the way forward.

Currently an archer can kill a same tier melee troop in 4-5 chest shots on average. This means they can kill any shieldless troop before they can even reach them.

Increasing armour resistance to arrows and bolts by 1.7X means that it would then take 7-8 chest shots to kill. So all sorts of troops, even without shields, would now be able to reach ranged troops and fight them in melee with at least half health left. This would make all sorts of troops capable of putting up a fight against archers in open field.

And if you do add more armor won't that make late game more grindy? See you constantly contradict yourself all the time.

In the lategame your army will be majority high tier troops. AI scraped together armies after a defeat will be majority low tier troops. Therefore giving recruits shields benefits those AI armies' survivability without increasing the survivability of the high tier troops in the player's army.

Meanwhile, buffing the armour values against pierce damage of ALL troops benefits the survivability of both enemy armies AND the player. It is an increase across the board.

It will also mean that it is actually worth doing different tactics and army compositions in battles rather than just spamming ranged troops with distraction infantry. So it will make the game more fun and battles more interesting, and if the player uses their troops well they will take less casualties from stray arrows.

Giving recruits shields won't end in more casualties for the player in late game. They're not stronger they just get some arrow protection.

Nonsense. More recruits not dying equals more recruits able to gang up on your t5 which means more casualties.

Yes, they're are a lot of fiefs to capture. The "grind" isn't really about capturing fiefs the "grind" is that the player reaches a certain point early in the game and he has zero chance of losing. That is when the "grind" starts. Capturing fiefs then becomes a chore and loses all it's fun. The player has every advantage over the AI except he can't be in multiple places at once that's his only weakness.

We both agree that grind consists of unchallenging activities you have to do in order to progress. Many battles the player engages in come under this description. Usually small parties who are no threat to you, but have to be beaten in order to increase your clan renown, or stop them from raiding or sieging your fiefs.

do you realize that is a small change?

Hence why it will not actually solve the problem.

But you are the most morbus of enforcers on that side

Morbius?

Let me tell you this magical terms knows as "militia" or "resistance groups". They fight with basically nothing but the minimal of equipment and are often made up by a bulk of simple civilians.

Recruits are not militia. Militia are militia.

Then even when good arguments are made

Where were those presented?

A PDF Manuscript with this said:
THE MILITIAS
Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the humanist and future Pope Pius II, commenting on the state of military preparedness in Germany in 1444, wrote that “not only every noble, but even every burgher (citizen) in the guilds has an armoury in his house so as to appear equipped at every alarm."

Recruits are not guildsmen. They are unaffiliated young men who are willing to leave their village or town and risk death in a travelling warband because they lack prospects at home.

Thing is, if a fight were about to happen near a village civilians would be called up (likely paid well too if they survived), then left there or dead after the fight is done. and communal milita forces had armories with extra equipment

That's what the actual militia in the game is. Recruits are not those militia.

Pretty sure extra shields were the norm in military logistics, as were extra weapons and armors. But let's forget about logistics right? not that it was important.

There is no logistics or organisation other than what the player introduces. You're a travelling warband, they're a random peasant who decided to join you to get away from farm life. It makes no sense that every single person who made that decision would just happen to have a shield lying around.

there are also other documents that prove that civilians could have the right to posses weaponry in their homes

The Fyrd

The Fyrd

spartacus-educational.com

"The leaders of the fyrd, the thegns, had sword and spears but the rest of the men were inexperienced fighters and carried weapons such as iron clubs, slings, axes, scythes, sickles and haymaking forks."

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Chronicle of the Norman Conquest, by Master Wace.

"The villains were also called together from the villages, bearing such arms as they found; clubs and great picks, iron forks and stakes."

The Battle of Hastings

A resource for historic arms and armor collectors with photo galleries, reviews, reference materials, discussion forums, a bookstore and a comparison tool.

myarmoury.com

"Behind them stood the lesser thegns and peasant levies, armed with whatever weapons they had been able to find."

The mention of these odd weapons but not shields indicates that perhaps many people did not simply have shields lying around in their houses to bring with them to battle.

The 1242 Statute of Arms in England required that:
"Free men between the age of 15 and 60 should arm themselves as follows:
Those with a knight’s fee (xv. libratas terre) must have hauberk (loricam), iron hat (capellum ferreum), sword (gladium), knife (cultellum), and horse (equum).
Those with half a knight’s fee (x. libratas terre) must have haubergeon (haubergellum), iron hat (capellum ferreum), sword and knife (gladium et cultellum).
Those with 100 shillings worth of land must have pourpoint (purpointum), iron hat (capellum ferreum), sword (gladium), spear (lanceam), and knife (cultellum).
Those with land worth between 40 and 100 shillings must have sword (gladium), bow (arcum), arrows (sagittas), and knife (cultellum).
Those with land worth less than 40 shillings must have scythes (falces), guisarmes (gysarmas), knives (cultellos), and other small arms (et alia arma minuta).
Those with goods valued at 60 marks must have hauberk (loricam), hat (capellum), sword (gladium), knife (cultellum), and horse (equum).
Those with goods valued at 40 marks must have haubergeon (haubergellum), hat (capellum), sword (gladium), and knife (cultellum).
Those with goods valued at 20 marks must have pourpoint (purpointum), hat (capellum), sword (gladium), and knife (cultellum).
Those with goods valued at 10 marks must have sword, knife, bow, and arrows (gladium, cultellum, arcum et sagittas).
Those with goods valued between 40 shillings and 10 marks must have scythes (falces), knives (cultellos), guisarmes (gysarmas), and other small arms (et alia arma minuta)."
Note the lack of requirement for shields.

 

[five bucks]

My issue is not leveling them, at least not late game so much. I'm well aware with the right perks in Leadership you can breeze through the lower tiers or bypass them entirely.

It's that as a unit, in-game, they are ostensibly bad. Not because they are "low level" but in terms of equipment as an intermediary between a peasant and trained soldier.


Let's review; there are peasants in-game as a tier 0 troop, they have a wage of 1 gold a day, and a 20-30 Skill in all categories. They are equipped with scythes, pitchforks, hammers, rocks. Stuff you expect peasants to carry.

If I get a peasant in my party what is the sense in upgrading them to a recruit? Recruits cost more at 2 gold a day (not a big deal, but they do cost more), their skills are lower, and their equipment roster is arguably worse. How is that an "upgrade"? Yes it's a necessary step to make them an actual combat troop, but it's a bad chain of progression.

I fully agree we should either reduce the weapon skill of peasants, or increasing it of recruits to the same as peasants.

Recruits are volunteers. They are not conscripts, they are not levies forcibly dragged off the farm. They are *in theory* young men who are willing and eager go to war for money and glory. (Why you also can't get Recruits when too many other warbands move through village and or Fief Loyalty drops to 0.) Which means they'd equip themselves as best they could with more proper weapons, and less farm implements.

"As best they could" is the key. Shields are a solely military grade item. If up until that day you were a poor farm worker until the recruiters rode into town, there is a very good chance you would neither have need for one, nor be able to afford it.

The ones who can afford it are already available ingame as T2 troops through the village notable upgrade system.

Even if a Feudal Lord was a total cheapskate I have to imagine proper spears would be handed out or made for them. Ideally you'd want to give them a shield too. Even the cruelest, cheapest, pettiest warlord would have to pause looking at a bunch of dudes armed with a hand sickle or wooden hammer.

That's the militia, who are already armed. The volunteers who join you and leave the village are presumably not all part of the militia (considering militia numbers of fiefs fluctuate based on security but are not synonymous with hearths).

We have to assume that when you recruit a unit, they've been equipped, they are not waiting to be equipped

I think it makes no sense to assume that. Because to assume that would be to make the statement that every single man in Calradia owns a shield. Or alternately, that nobody ever decides to join the army if they don't already own a shield. And to me that's nonsensical.

 

[Chest Hunter]

I'm playing Mount and Blade: Bannerlord v1.0.2. What about you?

1.0.1 on console, did they remove the noble recruits from castle villages in that patch?

"The only counter to archers are mass shielded high tier troops" LOLLLLLLLLL my god I dread to see your in-game tactics my brothers. This thread is making me belly laugh on the daily, thank you Bluko.

Figured I'd toss in an edit for the brainlets: cavalry beats archers, spears beat cavalry, archers beat light infantry, heavy infantry beats spearmen, light infantry beats heavy (via flanking brainlet). But, most of all, a human brain will win most every battle even against hard counters. Your recruit peasants? They beat the fields, and the housework lol. All is as it should be.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaah my farmer peasants don't do good against career criminals who prey upon peasants waaaaaaaaaah literally unplayable.

Unless you're roleplaying as Simple Jack in-game and on the forums this is a non-issue.

 

[thomas13]

1.0.1 on console, did they remove the noble recruits from castle villages in that patch?

"The only counter to archers are mass shielded high tier troops" LOLLLLLLLLL my god I dread to see your in-game tactics my brothers. This thread is making me belly laugh on the daily, thank you Bluko.

Figured I'd toss in an edit for the brainlets: cavalry beats archers, spears beat cavalry, archers beat light infantry, heavy infantry beats spearmen, light infantry beats heavy (via flanking brainlet). But, most of all, a human brain will win most every battle even against hard counters. Your recruit peasants? They beat the fields, and the housework lol. All is as it should be.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaah my farmer peasants don't do good against career criminals who prey upon peasants waaaaaaaaaah literally unplayable.

Unless you're roleplaying as Simple Jack in-game and on the forums this is a non-issue.

Never go full retard.

 

[LyonExodus]

don't tell @Chest Hunter that you can very easily run an enemy formations of archers out simply by going left and right with your horse and keeping your shield high.
There is no need to tell a Grand Master of strategy the best strategy to use.

On a serious note, a T5 infantry formation or cavalry (even better since horse armor) can very easily tank all the volleys of 200 mixed archers and lose pretty much nobody. As long as you stay at around (150m/feet whatever) far away and wait for roughly 5 minutes the enemy archers will be out and you might have lost 3 units for doing so.

I did this test a while back using Fian Champions to test the shields effectiveness of troops, you have no idea how little they killed, but most importantly how little shields they destroyed.

if you were to charge cavalry you would lose plenty more, since after the first charge the Knight will show it's back to the archers that can very easily pick him off the horse.
It's almost like keeping your shield in front of your enemy works.
There is no ROCK / PAPER / SCISSOR in the game. there are tiers of units. Some are S tiers, some are not. the only real ROCK / PAPER / SCISSOR scenario happens in simulated fights where it works similarly to what @Chest Hunter described, altough much. much simpler.

Some combat mods do introduce a similar mechanic to the game but Vanilla is way simpler than that. It's unfortunate but that's the reality of it.

Now there is no need to make fun of @Bluko88 he does make a very good point and he isn't advocating for good shields on the T1 units.
He is just asking them to be better than the T0 (pesants) since T0 units have more skill and better equipment than T1 units.

Giving half of the templates a crap shield would at least compensate that. And make the recruits feel like an upgrade if we happen to have 10 T0 units in our party and want to upgrade them.
That's the point is he making. It's not just from a tactical side (which giving them some terrible shields isn't going to make them that much better) but also design wise since currently upgrading a T0 to a T1 is a net loss. in gold, equipment and skill.

 

[LyonExodus]

Recruits are not militia. Militia are militia.

Oh boy how predictable you are.
So you are telling me that a civilian worker, that dedicates himself to (if needed) the protection of his own town is better equipped than a guy who volunteers to join an army, and gets trained by said army, and gets fed by same army, basically the army is paying for his training and life?
The only thing the army wants in return is his service, that might very well last 1 battle.

Do you realize that the typical army recruit is as equipped if not better the moment they leave training to join a company than your typical policeman?
Why would that have been any different at the time? Yes sure you don't want these guys to fight and you will find any way to keep them off the battlefield but if you have to they are technically ready and you have to give them the tools to survive and operate if they don't have them themselves. Not doing so would be either desperate or mad.

Let alone the fact that a recruit likely trains 6 days a week and a militiamen trains when he can or doesn't
And for a force of volunteers there is a rigorous selection while anybody can join a milita. One is literally an aspiring professional the other is not or used to be a professional.

In the game we pay to get them, so we can safely assume that they haven't just decided to join us, but have been trained up by the recruiters of the town than then sell them to the passing lords.

in the game you aren't recruiting for nothing, you pay a fee to the notable to get the soldier, so a minimal training has been done.
then there is cooldown after recruiting. I think of that as new recruits are training up, switching from peasants to aspiring soldiers. You aren't buying peasants off the landlord, you are getting recruits.

Like a recruit is this: a person newly enlisted in the armed forces and not yet fully trained. to notice the word "fully" but that doesn't mean they don't know the basics. you can still be a recruit even after weeks of training.

A militia is this: a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. "emergency" Your last line of defense, the worst of the worst typically. Let alone the fact that the army might cooperate with them but don't have full control over.

And a civilian is this: a person not in the armed services or the police force.
Waiting on what you can find to make any of this sound stupid.

Most of the accounts i was able to find states that shields were one of the cheapest equipment you could get, don't know about you by if i was required to buy my own equipment after training i would get some kind of weapon and a shield. And i think most were able to afford them.

thing is i am sure you can find accounts of recruits "renting" equipment and having to pay with work hours or having their wages severely cut.
I am no economist but i know a few friends who are and there are many upsides to use such procedures to keep your army decently equipped.
I am sure lords and their "advisors" weren't any different and came up with similar stuff all the times.

Doesn't mean everyone did, but most surely could. Then those who didn't could always pick one from a dead soldier during the fight.

That would be smart but there is no mechanic in the game that allows recruits to grab a shield, even if it's a smart thing to do and something pretty much everyone would have done.
But i know for sure that there is such a mechanic for shielded troops. if their shield is destroyed and they find the time to pick a new one off the ground they do.

So the way you compensate that is giving them a very crappy shield. it doesn't only make sense but it's the smartest thing to do from the soldier prospective.

or you could add the above mentioned mechanic to the recruits.

you'll find a way to make even common sense look wrong anyway. At least you can entertain us all.
Also pardon me but you know the reference material you used was just from England right? If i recall correctly Engliand is not the entirety of Europe or the only nation present in Medieval history.

Are you working under the assumption that the only true system in place at the time was English? like everyone else didn't have theirs and how they might work differently? Cause i mean, sure you can only look at the English armies only since it proves your argument correct but who would they be in Calradian terms? The Vlandians? Battanians? Western Empire?

Scandinavian and Italian cities armies didn't use the same system. And likely everyone had it's own in the end.

This is the difference between us.
i and others can find solutions even after our first statements, we can change our mind and look at different directions
You get stuck in one line of thinking and can't get out of it even when people bring forward good options. It's unfortunate man, it really is.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Those requirements are what levied men were supposed to own and maintain at all times, not just during war. The reason it doesnt include shields (or padded armour, or a scabbard, or even a saddle for the knight) is because they are piss easy to make or buy. A knight or man at arms without a shield would have been practically a liability, even in 1242 when shieldwalls were still the dominant infantry formation on the battlefield, so their absense from the list (along with many other battlefield essentials) is not evidence that they were not used.

 

[five bucks]

Oh boy how predictable you are.
So you are telling me that a civilian worker, that dedicates himself to (if needed) the protection of his own town is better equipped than a guy who volunteers to join an army, and gets trained by said army, and gets fed by same army, basically the army is paying for his training and life?
The only thing the army wants in return is his service, that might very well last 1 battle.

The town can fund militia equipment for defense of the town. But for someone who is planning to LEAVE the town (and maybe even attack it later) why would it fund him?

Do you realize that the typical army recruit is as equipped if not better the moment they leave training to join a company than your typical policeman?

Highly sophisticated and organised modern times are irrelevant to Bannerlord's highly disorganised Early Dark Ages setting.

Yes sure you don't want these guys to fight and you will find any way to keep them off the battlefield but if you have to they are technically ready and you have to give them the tools to survive and operate if they don't have them themselves. Not doing so would be either desperate or mad.

Medieval lords' attitudes to peasants varied wildly and many of them did not give a single **** about their peasants' wellbeing other than how far it impacted their ability to generate taxes.

"Desperate?" Yes that is exactly why a peasant would leave home to join a roving warband and maybe die, if he was in desperate poverty.

And for a force of volunteers there is a rigorous selection

No. I ride into town, I ask the notables if anyone would like to join my roving warband, they say "oh that farmhand over there, and if I like you enough I'll tell you about that guy who also owns a sword and shield and knows how to use them."

In the game we pay to get them, so we can safely assume that they haven't just decided to join us, but have been trained up by the recruiters of the town than then sell them to the passing lords.

No, that assumption has no basis. A more sensible assumption is that we are paying the recruit themselves as a sign up bonus.

you pay a fee to the notable to get the soldier, so a minimal training has been done.

(Citation needed)

then there is cooldown after recruiting. I think of that as new recruits are training up, switching from peasants to aspiring soldiers. You aren't buying peasants off the landlord, you are getting recruits

There is a cool down because the village doesn't have infinite population and new young men need to come of age. The notables aren't military trainers, they are workshop owners and farm owners which is made very clear by their professions and names.

Like a recruit is this: a person newly enlisted in the armed forces and not yet fully trained. to notice the word "fully" but that doesn't mean they don't know the basics. you can still be a recruit even after weeks of training.

You become a recruit the moment you join a military force. Whether you know the basics or not (you actually won't).

Most of the accounts i was able to find states that shields were one of the cheapest equipment you could get

Source?

thing is i am sure you can find accounts of recruits "renting" equipment and having to pay with work hours or having their wages severely cut.

How would recruits rent shields from me? I'm not carrying piles of shields around (neither are villages) and the only work I have to offer them is combat.

Doesn't mean everyone did, but most surely could. Then those who didn't could always pick one from a dead soldier during the fight.

That's what happens at T2. After fighting a bit they pick up a shield from loot.

If i recall correctly Engliand is not the entirety of Europe or the only nation present in Medieval history.

Sure. So you want me to provide a legal document from the mediaeval period from every mediaeval European country? Very reasonable request lol.

The burden of proof here is on you, not me. So if you think that example is not representative, prove it.

Those requirements are what levied men were supposed to own and maintain at all times, not just during war.

Explain for what purpose those items were intended if not wartime.

The reason it doesnt include shields is because they are piss easy to make or buy

Making a shield requires cutting down a decently sized tree (requires use of an iron saw), cutting the boards lengthwise into planks and planing them down (actually very difficult and time consuming without modern technology), attaching the planks to a frame with iron nails (which were so expensive to make that people would burn houses down to retrieve the nails), and attaching a handle and shieldboss (requiring more expensive, scarce iron). And doing it all in a sturdy enough fashion it wouldn't fall apart at the first sneeze, otherwise you would literally be better off without one. So no, not "piss easy to make".

For buying one? Ingame, the cheapest shields cost more to buy than recruits cost to hire. Even if we say that's unrealistic and the costs are messed up, in real life and in Bannerlord's setting there would be many, many peasants who were living a hand to mouth existence due to famines and heavy taxation and banditry. They would have absolutely no money to spare, if they had any money at all. So it is ridiculous to me that you guys poor people apparently do not exist and everyone has disposable income to spare for just going out and buying things.

Rather than the real reason many people would join a roving warband - or become looters: desperation from extreme poverty. And as we see, looters do not have shields.

So it's consistent that recruits, who are just "looters but lawful alternate ending", don't have shields either.

so their absense from the list (along with many other battlefield essentials) is not evidence that they were not used.

I'm not saying it's not evidence they weren't used. I'm saying it's evidence they weren't required.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

See with all this talk, I am once again reminded of how well Viking Conquest handled this sh*t.

They have crap, useless t1 troops that you seldom see much of because you end up recruiting t2 troops much more often. And in bulk.

Notably, troop training takes ages and trying to spam elites is not just hard but impractical when everything else will do the job well enough.

 

[LyonExodus]

Shields were cheap mate.
Cmon They needed 2 boards, a few cuts, some glue and some metal to stick together. And that isn't even the simplest of designs. Yet they were less pricy than a gambeson set.
Not to even mention that some camps might had repair and smith shops before attacks so to make them and repair weaponry on the fly.
Source? sure sure 2

This is a shop that sells them today. Now if the least expensive cost less than 20$ today i can only imagine how little they did back then when wood was used and abundant and blacksmiths were around every corner.

 

[LyonExodus]

so their absense from the list (along with many other battlefield essentials) is not evidence that they were not used.

very good point that i didn't even notice.
So standing for @five bucks reasoning he also must think that man at arms and knights didn't carry shields.

Sounds like there is a flaw somewhere in there.
They probably weren't listed or ever mentioned because well, common.

 

[five bucks]

very good point that i didn't even notice.
So standing for @five bucks reasoning he also must think that man at arms and knights didn't carry shields.

Sounds like there is a flaw somewhere in there.
They probably weren't listed or ever mentioned because well, common.

I already replied to this. I am not saying nobody used them. I am saying that since it was not a requirement, obviously the king's lawmakers realised that not every peasant could be expected to afford a shield.

Shields were cheap mate.
Cmon They needed 2 boards, a few cuts, some glue and some metal to stick together.

This was already addressed, in addition do you know how glue was obtained? Boiling down the hooves of livestock. Do you know how metal was obtained? Going down a mine, digging it out over many hundreds of hours, smelting it down in a specialised furnace, hammering it to the correct shape. Livestock was expensive (owning a single cow was a lot!). Metal was expensive and hard to come by.

A medieval peasant isn't playing Minecraft. They can't just go punch dirt and trees.

Source? sure sure 2

Read your own sources.

"One could think that a medieval shield was a rather simple piece of armor that only consisted of a few wooden boards that were nailed together. But that was actually not the case".

So that totally ruins your first argument. Shields were not easy to construct.

"Spear and shield: 2 Shillings".

"Byrnie (shirt of mail): 12 shillings."

"Stallion: 7 shillings."

A mail shirt and stallion were some of the most expensive things in existence in the medieval age, the equivalent of buying a Ferrari. A spear and shield cost ⅙ the cost of that.

In other words, pricewise, it would be vastly out of reach for an impoverished peasant to own a spear and shield, and it makes it ridiculous to think that every single pauper in Calradia would own a pair of such expensive weapons. Thanks for making my argument for me.

This is a shop that sells them today. Now if the least expensive cost less than 20$ today i can only imagine how little they did back then when wood was used and abundant and blacksmiths were around every corner.

You are not appreciating how far the world has come since 1000AD. Today we have power saws, plantation timber harvested by machines, production lines, mines with giant digging machines and industrial furnaced, etc which all vastly reduces the cost of making things. That was the whole damn point of the Industrial Revolution: before that, making things was difficult, expensive and usually in the domain of artisan guilds.

Wood is just as "used and abundant" today, you are probably sitting on or inside something made of wood.

So modern prices are absolutely not applicable to mediaeval stuff and you should feel ridiculous for trying to advance that as an argument.

 

[LyonExodus]

You are not appreciating how far the world has come since 1000AD. Today we have power saws, plantation timber harvested by machines, production lines, mines with giant digging machines and industrial furnaced, etc which all vastly reduces the cost of making things. That was the whole damn point of the Industrial Revolution: before that, making things was difficult, expensive and usually in the domain of artisan guilds.

Today armies are not 10K man also. But that isn't important i bet.

But it's fine man. you are right, if not you are relentless. Better to give up instead of wasting time making good point that your close mindedness will find a way to discard anyway.

have fun with the others and bring on your crusade of Shields weren't common or cheap. despite accounts stating the opposite.
The question of the poll is :Should SOME recruits have shields. You said some could have had shield. But then you seem to go on in the other direction in your follow up statements.

I tried to be reasonable and i failed. reason does tend to fail with people like you

 

[five bucks]

Today armies are not 10K man also. But that isn't important i bet.

If you can explain how it is relevant we can discuss that.

have fun with the others and bring on your crusade of Shields weren't common or cheap. despite accounts stating the opposite.

Mate. The sources YOU linked said that shields were not cheap, nor easy to make.
Of course shields were common among soldiers. But "common" does not mean "universally owned and used". Shields are already very common in Bannerlord for all infantry troops except the freshest recruits.

The question of the poll is :Should SOME recruits have shields. You said some could have had shield. But then you seem to go on in the other direction in your follow up statements.
But it's fine man. you are right, if not you are relentless. Better to give up instead of wasting time making good point that your close mindedness will find a way to discard anyway.

I tried to be reasonable and i failed. reason does tend to fail with people like you

If you want to end the argument here I am very happy to. However, it is dishonest to say that I am being unreasonable when you already put forward a compromise (some but not all recruits having shields) and I already agreed that it was a good idea, just with a different ratio (1 in 5 recruits having shields).

I am not going in the other direction in my follow up statements, everything I've said is consistent with itself and quite reasonable. Reason hasn't failed with me, you just don't want to continue the argument. And that's fine, just say that.

 

[Chest Hunter]

You are not appreciating how far the world has come since 1000AD. Today we have power saws, plantation timber harvested by machines, production lines, mines with giant digging machines and industrial furnaced, etc which all vastly reduces the cost of making things. That was the whole damn point of the Industrial Revolution: before that, making things was difficult, expensive and usually in the domain of artisan guilds.

But, but... M'pyramids :'(

"I tried to be reasonable and i failed. reason does tend to fail with people like you"
There is nothing reasonable about your arguments, the poll has spoken.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Those requirements are what levied men were supposed to own and maintain at all times, not just during war.

Explain for what purpose those items were intended if not wartime.

See this is why you're a pain in the ass to have a conversation with. All you care about is being 100% correct all the time, so you nitpick everything sentence by sentence and word for word like a robot without actually looking at the context.

My point is that levy requirements were to be maintained all year round. Obviously there was no use for a sword or hauberk during peacetime, but a Knight was expected to own and maintain them constantly.

Making a shield requires cutting down a decently sized tree (requires use of an iron saw), cutting the boards lengthwise into planks and planing them down (actually very difficult and time consuming without modern technology), attaching the planks to a frame with iron nails (which were so expensive to make that people would burn houses down to retrieve the nails), and attaching a handle and shieldboss (requiring more expensive, scarce iron). And doing it all in a sturdy enough fashion it wouldn't fall apart at the first sneeze, otherwise you would literally be better off without one. So no, not "piss easy to make".

There is no way you really believe that a shield is significantly harder to make than a guisarme or scythe or anything else on that list.